Big Apple

"Big Apple" is a nickname for New York City. It was first popularized in the 1920s by John J. Fitz Gerald, a sports writer for the New York Morning Telegraph. Its popularity since the 1970s is due to a promotional campaign by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, known now as NYC & Company.

Etymology

Although the history of Big Apple was once thought a mystery, research – primarily by amateur etymologist Barry Popik and Gerald Cohen of Missouri University of Science and Technology – has provided a reasonably clear picture of the term's history. Previously, there were a number of false etymologies, including a claim that the term derived from a New York brothel whose madam was known as Eve. This was subsequently exposed as a hoax and has been replaced on the source website with more accurate information.

Early mentions

The earliest citation for "big apple" is the 1909 book The Wayfarer in New York by Edward S. Martin, writing: "Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city.... It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap" (emphasis added).William Safire considered this the coinage, but the Random House Dictionary of American Slang considers the usage "metaphorical or perhaps proverbial, rather than a concrete example of the later slang term", and Popik likewise does not consider this the coinage.

Big Apple (dance)

The Big Apple is both a partner dance and a circle dance that originated in the Afro-American community of the United States in the beginning of the 20th century.

History

Origin (1860-1936)

The exact origin of the Big Apple is unclear but one author suggests that the dance originated from the "ring shout", a group dance associated with religious observances that was founded before 1860 by African Americans on plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. The ring shout is described as a dance with "counterclockwise circling and high arm gestures" that resembled the Big Apple. It is still practiced today in small populations of the southern United States.

The dance that eventually became known as the Big Apple is speculated to have been created in the early 1930s by African-American youth dancing at the Big Apple Club, which was at the former House of Peace Synagogue on Park Street in Columbia, South Carolina. The synagogue was converted into a black juke joint called the "Big Apple Night Club".

Big Apple (disambiguation)

The Big Apple is a nickname for New York City, New York, United States.

Big Apple may also refer to:

See also