1890–95, < German: Frankfort sausage; see -er 1
A frankfurter is another name for a hot dog. It's the mild sausage served on a bun that you eat while watching a baseball game. Depending where you're from, you might call a frankfurter a frank, a wiener, or a dog. Frankfurters are pink or red sausages made of meat trimmings packed inside a thin, edible casing, and served with mustard, ketchup, or relish. The name, adopted in English during the late 19th century, reflects the German heritage of all variations on the frankfurter — it comes from Frankfurter wurst, "sausage of Frankfurt."
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Delivery to the remote Yosemite National Park post office — as evidenced by what current Yosemite Postmaster Ellen Damin calls “the great frankfurter debacle” — has never been easy.
From Los Angeles Times • May 23, 2025
He admits to having a similar maudlin blindspot when it comes to Detroit's Coney dogs — a beef frankfurter on a bun smothered in beanless chili, mustard, onions and shredded cheese.
From Salon • Sep. 27, 2022
A proper Chicago dog is an all-beef frankfurter in a poppy seed bun with yellow mustard, sweet pickle relish, chopped white onion, tomato slices, a dill pickle spear, pickled sport peppers and celery salt.
From New York Times • Jul. 25, 2022
The annual Fourth of July frankfurter fest normally happens outside Nathan’s flagship shop in Brooklyn’s Coney Island neighborhood.
From Seattle Times • Jul. 4, 2021
One crumpled frankfurter lav 011 its side, its one wheel horizontal above it, a traffic fatality.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
