Mary Bowerman

USA TODAY

Is a hot dog a sandwich?

The great debate over whether a hotdog is a sandwich reached new levels this week when a Louisville newspaper issued a correction for "incorrectly" referring to hot dogs as sandwiches ten times over a period of decades.

On Wednesday, which happened to be National Hotdog Day, the Courier-Journal, noted that the paper referred to hot dogs as sandwiches 10 times, beginning in 1887 and ending in 1966.

"Among those errors were references to a frankfurter sausage sandwich, frankfurter sandwich, coney island sandwich, frankfurter sandwich with mustard, and, the most egregious, a frankfurter sandwich with catchup (ketchup, anyone?)," the Courier-Journal wrote. "We deeply regret the errors, especially that last one."

The Executive Editor at the Courier-Journal, which is part of the USA TODAY Network, tweeted that the paper was prompted to issue the corrections because it is "deadly serious about accuracy."

And hot-dog gate did not end there.

Courier-Journal Columnist Joseph Gerth called the corrections and the very notion that a hot dog is not a sandwich "fake news."

Gerth noted that his boss "went against years of convention and bought into the powerful weiner-industry lobby's hype and decided that a hot dog is not, in fact, a sandwich."

"A sandwich is nothing more than bread and some sort of filling — sometimes peanut butter, or egg salad, or even watercress — and any accompanying condiments or vegetables," he wrote. "...Unless you’re one of those food snobs who argues that hot dogs aren’t really meat, it’s impossible to say it’s anything but a sandwich."

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As Gerth notes the question of whether a hot dog is a sandwich or not has been divisive for years, and attempts to settle the score have popped up countless times.

In 2015, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council concluded that a hot dog is not a sandwich. A year later Merriam-Webster tweeted in opposition, saying simply "the hot dog is sandwich."

"We know: the idea that a hot dog is a sandwich is heresy to some of you. But given that the definition of a sandwich is 'two or more slices of bread or a split roll having a filling in between,' there is no sensible way around it.'" the dictionary said in a statement.

Frankly, this debate is going nowhere.

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Correction: A hot dog is not a sandwich

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