"The Big Apple" again

[Gerald Cohen]

    Cecil Adams (_NY Press_, Arts and Listings, Sept. 15-21, 1999) presents
an item on "The Big Apple" and the contributions of Barry Popik to solving
its origin.  This is all very welcome.

    However, Adams also  regards a 1909 attestation of "the big apple" in
reference to NYC as indicating that NYC's  nickname existed  prior to the
1920's  items  by turf-writer John J. Fitz Gerald which Popik spotted.

  The 1909 item is by Edward S. Martin, _The Wayfarer in New York_, p.xv:
"It [the Mid-West] inclines to think that the big apple gets a
disproportionate share of the national sap." The quote appears in an
anti-NYC context,  "The big apple" here means roughly "overweening big
shot" and only happens to refer to NYC.  It's as if I referred to
Washington, D.C. as "the big enchilada" in a discussion of political power;
but if I then went to the train station and asked for a ticket to The Big
Enchilada, the ticket-seller would have no idea where I wanted to go."

    John J. Fitz Gerald  picked up the term "the big apple" from two
African-American stable hands in New Orleans, 1920, who used the term in
reference to the NYC racetracks (not NYC  as a whole).  Fitz Gerald then
popularized the term singlehandedly.  But it was not until 1927 that the
first attestation of "The Big Apple" outside of a horseracing context
appeared (Walter Winchell, once, in reference to Broadway).  Fred Shapiro
also found a 1928 attestation in a film context ("Slang of Film Men").

    In other words, outside of a horseracing context, "The Big Apple" was
only slightly used even in the 1920s in reference to NYC.   Meanwhile, the
search for a pre-1920 attestation of "the big apple" in reference to NYC
or any of its activities is a largely futile exercise.  The 1909
attestation is misleading.  If "the big apple" were a nickname for NYC
prior to 1920, it should be attested at least occasionally.  And it simply
isn't.

----Gerald Cohen



gcohen at umr.edu