"The Big Apple" --its rationale

[Gerald Cohen]

  In an Oct. 20 message, Joseph McCollum  suggests a possible rationale for
NYC's nickname "The Big Apple":

>>I thought it was a description of the map of the city...with the stem
>>being The Bronx, the core being Manhattan, and the fruit being Staten
>>Island/Brooklyn/Queens.

       The rationale is rather that the big red delicious apple was
regarded as something extra special.  The isolated 1909 quote---"It [the
Mid-West] inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate
share of the national sap"---has "big apple" meaning roughly "overweening
big shot"  in reference to NYC.  That is, NYC  regards itself unjustly  as
something extra special.

    The next attestations (1920 ff.)  have "the big apple" referring to the
NYC racetracks (not NYC as a whole!).   For trainers and jockeys active in
the "bushes" (e.g. the county fairs of South Dakota or Oklahoma), the NYC
tracks, with  their  big purses to be won,  represented the big time,  the
big treat, i.e. "the big apple."

----Gerald Cohen




gcohen at umr.edu