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Glite Dictionary
tube steak

tube steak

1 8.9
A sausage served in a bun, often sold at outdoor events
  • noun
  • /tuːb steɪk/
  • Slang
translation icon : perrito caliente
  • For lunch, I grabbed a tube steak from the food truck that usually parks near my office.

Examples

  • During the summer picnic, kids raced to see who could finish their tube steaks first.

  • And what's the story with this tube steak?

    The Acid House (1998)

  • At the barbecue, everyone enjoyed their tube steak in a warm bun with condiments.

Synonyms

hot dog
vstube steak
252 1.0

A cooked sausage in a sliced bun, often with mustard or ketchup

is the informal slang term rather than the common neutral name
hotdog
vstube steak
19 1.0

A cooked sausage in a sliced bun often eaten as fast food

is informal slang rather than the everyday food name

Surface Forms

tube steak singular
tube steaks plural

Morphology

tube + steak

The compound literally joins 'tube' (a cylindrical object) with 'steak' (meat), so a learner could plausibly infer a cylindrical piece of meat and guess something like a sausage. However, 'steak' normally denotes a solid cut of meat and the phrase is slang/culture-specific for a hot dog in a bun, so the precise referent is not fully predictable without exposure.

Etymology

Tube steak comes from a simple picture: the sausage looks like a tube, and calling it a steak is a joking way to make it sound bigger. That's why this slang now means 'a hot dog' or 'a sausage in a bun'.