Earliest Absolutely Unmistakable Usage of "Big Apple" = New York City

[Fred Shapiro]

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004, Jonathon Green wrote:

> 1927 Walter Winchell 'Broadway is the Big Apple, the Main Stem, the goal of
>
> This is cited by Nick Tosches on p. 266 of his history of American blackface
> minstrelsy 'Where Dead Voices Gather (2002, UK edn.). I have no way, short
> of contacting Tosches, of ascertaining his precise source. I presume it was
> a column; WW was then working for the NY Graphic and he was just beginning
> to be syndicated. I think this obviously  transcends earlier uses as regard
> racetracks, but could, I suppose, be seen as a ref. to Broadway only, rather
> than the whole city.

This citation is in HDAS.  Like the citation I posted, it comes from
_Bookman._  It seems clearly to be referring to Broadway, rather than to
New York City as a whole.

> Tosches also refers to a 1909 ref. to 'Big Apple' = NYC in Edward S Martin:
> The Wayfarer in New York. I presume, without checking the archives, that
> this has long since been dealt with (pro or con) by Barry and/or Fred. My
> apologies if the Winchell also merely rehearses information that has also
> been looked at.

This is the controversial citation that William Safire regards as the
first use of "Big Apple."  HDAS lists it as the first use, without square
brackets, but notes: "Various factors -- the absence of capitalization or
quotation marks around what would have been considered an unusual term,
the large gap between the first and second citations, and the evident
novelty of the term in the 1920's -- make it probable that the 1909 quot.
represents a metaphorical or perhaps proverbial usage, rather than a
concrete example of the later slang term."

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
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  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
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