Big Apple Scorecard

[Fred Shapiro]

Will Barry Popik be pleased or apoplectic about tomorrow's William Safire
column in the New York Times, in which Safire finally writes about Barry's
"Big Apple" researches?  Probably the latter...

What interests me is that there seem to be three serious theories
about the coinage of "Big Apple" referring to New York City (no, the jazz
and dance theories are not serious theories), with the experts taking
different and sometimes surprising positions.  The three theories are:

(1) Edward Martin coined it in a 1909 book.  This citation was discovered
by a librarian at the New York Historical Society, I believe, and
popularized by Gerald Cohen.

(2) John Fitzgerald, who clearly developed "Big Apple" as a term for New
York City race tracks, made the transition to using it to refer to the
city as a whole in a 1924 column.  This citation was discovered by Barry
Popik.

(3) The first clear usage of "Big Apple" to mean the city as a whole was
in a 1928 glossary of movie terms in the New York Times.  This citation
was discovered by Fred Shapiro.

Safire says in tomorrow's column that "The etymologist Barry Popik, with
fresh support from the phrase detectives Fred Shapiro and Gerald Cohen,
has long been campaigning to give coinage honors to John J. Fitzgerald, a
turf writer."

The real positions are a little bit more complicated than that.  Here's a
scorecard (Barry and Jerry, please correct me if I've got any of this
wrong):

Barry Popik is a strong proponent of (2).

Fred Shapiro, although the discoverer of (3), tends to accept (2), giving
much weight to the fact that the 1924 column is accompanied by a picture
of an apple with New York City and the Woolworth Building inside it.  If
he were editing the OED, he might put the 1924 citation in square
brackets as a transitional usage.

Gerald Cohen, although the popularizer of (1), has indicated to me in
recent correspondence that he accepts (3), and doesn't seem to attach much
importance to the picture of the apple with New York City inside it.

William Safire, although he writes for the newspaper responsible for the
citation in (3), endorses (1).

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has (1) as its
first use, albeit with a note describing (1) as probably metaphorical
rather than a concrete example of the later slang term.

The OED has (3) as its first use, but this was edited, I believe, before
Cohen and Popik published theories (1) and (2).

Maybe Jesse Sheidlower gets to make the final call when the time comes to
revise the entry for "Big Apple" in the OED.  Or maybe Jesse can tell us
now whether he would put the 1909 and 1924 citations in square brackets.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu
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