Why Is A Hot Dog Called A Glizzy?

Whether it's a grilled dog at a backyard barbecue or a dirty water hot dog eaten on the streets of New York City, these sausages are symbols of Americana. But, in recent years you might have heard this iconic food referred to by a new name: glizzy. This label has taken off on the internet and threatens to become the number one title for hot dogs. Confusingly, the name eschews the traditional slang for hot dogs that reference the sausage's origins with names like frankfurter, or its makeup with names like tube steak, and instead refers to a firearm. Specifically, the word glizzy is apparently derived from the Glock handgun, with the suffix "izzy" tacked on after the first couple letters.

Glizzy has been used in the hip-hop community to refer to the firearm for decades. Rapper Big Pun was likely one of the first to use the word, in his 2000 song, "It's So Hard." But, how the term made the jump from handgun to hot dog is a little more questionable. The general idea is that an extended magazine for a Glock handgun is similar in size to a hot dog, which led street food customers in Washington D.C. to start applying the handgun slang to sausages. It seems like a stretch, however, no one has other explanations for how this strange name came to dominate the world of hot dogs. As is often the case with food and popular culture, there's no clear start to this fast-growing phenomenon.

In some parts of the U.S., hot dogs are a point of pride. Look no further than Detroit's Coney Island hot dogs, the southwest's Sonoran dogs, or Chicago-style links for evidence of how serious people are about these sausages. Even the nation's leaders have strong opinions on the matter, as even Former President Barack Obama shared his controversial opinion about hot dog condiments — spoiler alert: as a Chicagoan, he thinks ketchup is for kids. While hot dogs are serious business for many Americans, on the internet, they embody fun, and the term "glizzy" seems to be at the heart of it all.

Hot dogs have always been something of a silly food in certain contexts, but it seems that this goofy, new name has turned them into a cultural phenomenon. Glizzy content pops up on social media in many forms these days. On Facebook, you can find videos of a man at a baseball game coring out a hot dog to use as a straw for drinking beer, or watch the heroics of someone called the "Glizzy Gobbler" scarfing down links in a fraction of a second on Reddit. Others have capitalized on the current internet zeitgeist by doing things like dressing as a hot dog and creating (frankly, confusing) TikTok videos.

The origin of the word glizzy referencing a gun manufacturer certainly seems unusual, but it's also perhaps the most deeply American name possible for the symbolic sausage. However it came to be, what's certain is that the internet loves its glizzies.