Why Is A Hot Dog Called A Glizzy?

If you've been on social media any time in the past few years, you've no doubt collided with the glizzy memesphere. There are countless photos of celebrities chomping down on hot dogs, captioned with the words, "Glizzy Gobbler" or "Glizzy Gladiator". Images of politicians snacking on America's favorite sausage are often tagged #GlizzyGate. When Joey Chestnut, the nation's premier hot dog muncher, announced that he was banned from the 2024 Nathan's hot dog eating contest, his X (formerly Twitter) post was bombarded by replies featuring the word "glizzy," including from Costco, famed in its own right for its food court hot dogs, which referred to Chestnut as "the GLIZZY GOAT." It's the internet's favored term for hot dogs, but why?

The term "glizzy" first arose some time around the late 1990s, originally having a very different meaning. It started as a piece of hip-hop slang for a Glock handgun. The addition of "-izzy" may have been linked to the rise of the "-izzle" suffix in rap around the late 1990s, a trend most closely associated with Snoop Dogg. By the year 2000, "glizzy" was on the lips of such notable rappers as Big Pun, who dropped it in the opening verse of his posthumous single, "It's So Hard," and Lil' Kim, who rapped, "Like my boy Castor Troy with the twin glizzies," (a reference to the movie "Face/Off") on her song "Aunt Dot". So, glizzy = Glock, okay ... but how did it become a word for hot dogs?

The use of glizzy in reference to hot dogs began around Washington, D.C. The exact cause of this transition is a bit of a mystery, with many surmising that the answer is simple: A hot dog is similar in length to an extended magazine for a pistol. There's a little more to the story than that, however.

In 2014, a young rapper from D.C. caught the internet's attention with a viral hit entitled, "Awwsome". His name was Marquis Amonte King, but like all great rappers, he had a moniker: $hy Glizzy. As the frontman of a hip-hop collective called the Glizzy Gang, he brought the term to greater prominence, particularly in the District of Columbia. Some have even suggested that $hy Glizzy's own affinity for hot dogs played a role in giving the word a new meaning.

"Glizzy" became indelibly linked to hot dogs shortly after the Glizzy Gang got started. In 2016, a YouTuber from the D.C. area uploaded a video entitled "The 3 most popular hot dogs (glizzys) you'll encounter." The next year, glizzy appeared in Urban Dictionary with the definition, "Another word for a hotdog in D.C." But it wouldn't stay exclusive to D.C. for long, not if social media had anything to say about it.

Glizzy gained widespread use in the summer of 2020 as a trend on TikTok, which is where terms like Glizzy Gladiator, Glizzy Gobbler, and Glizzy Guzzler arose. As you might imagine, glizzy memes typically rely on suggestive humor, playing off of the phallic shape of a frankfurter. As more and more posts appeared, glizzy became the internet's favorite term for hot dogs. Eventually, food content creators picked up on the trend, unleashing glizzy recipe videos and attempting viral feats like making extra-long glizzies.

No event has had a bigger role in the rise of glizzy memes than the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. Competitive eating's most notable figure, Nathan's multi-time champ Joey Chestnut, has embraced the Glizzy Gladiator and Glizzy GOAT nicknames, which now appear in almost every headline about him. Then, in 2023, a fresh face appeared at the contest who would embrace the glizzy trend in unprecedented fashion. California native Elizabeth Salgado competed under the nickname, "Glizzy Lizzy," and while she only managed to take down four and a quarter hot dogs in the competition, her name went viral, garnering millions of views, and perhaps even inspiring the next wave of glizzy gladiators.