what is the meaning of ''big apple''?

Question

it is a slang

Answer 1

First, before someone brings it up, there is an odd story relating the name to a bordello "Eve's apples". There is absolutely no historical foundation for this. In fact, the page from which many originally borrowed this story (http://salwen.com/apple.html --The Society for New York History) never gave a source for the story and has since removed it! I think we can dismiss that one as an urban legend.

More often these days you will read the Barry Popik explanation (already given in another answer). It certainly has merit, but if you look closely it does not actually EXPLAIN the origins. And unfrotunately, it downplays the JAZZ and NEW ORLEANS connections of the term.

A closer look --

Barry Popik's documentation of Fitzgerald's discovery of the term around 1920 --now widely accepted as THE explanation-- is an important part of the answer, but notice that it does NOT pull all the pieces together, nor does it actually tell you the SOURCE of the expression!! ("Big" makes sense for an importnat place, but WHY call it an "apple"??) Fitzgerald was just relating an expression he first heard on a trip to New Orleans.

The New Orleans connection appears to be absolutely critical. Note that it fits in with the long recognized use of the term "big apple" among New York jazz musicians of the 1930s (New Orleans roots!) And note that the fact that the term's first clearly DOCUMENTED use (by Fitzgerald) does NOT show us that the 'racetrack' application preceded its application to the jazz scene (it's hard to imagine how that would happen). It might well have happened the other way round!

So who coined the phrase, and why? I believe John Ciardi and Robert Hendrickson offer the best explanation, one which fits in very well with the Fitzgerald and jazz musician stories (though oddly Popik tends to be dismissive of it, perhaps thinking it somehow undercuts his work ?!) At any rate it makes a LOT of sense.

The explanation is simple:
The word "manzana" in Spanish means either apple or 'built up block of houses, neighborhood'. Ciardi suggests that the slang expression 'manzana prinicipale' i.e., 'main/big apple [or apple orchard]' was thrown around in New Orleans, a city with some old Spanish roots and expressions, not just French. (Popik seems to dislike the Spanish explanation because of the "French" background of New Orleans, but in fact there was more than one cultural influence in this area).

It's easy to see how such an expression might be picked up and used by folks in New Orleans to refer to some 'hot spot' where the MAIN action in a field (jazz, racing, whatever) was to be found --that was the place to be!

"In about 1910 jazz musicians there used it as a loose translation of the Spanish 'manzana principal,' the main 'apple orchard,' the main city block downtown, the place where all the action is." From the "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997)."
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/21/messages/1121.html

Answer 2

Here is your answer:

There is no single, authoritative answer as to why New York City is known as The Big Apple. That the term is now widely known may be due to a tourism publicity campaign launched by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau in 1971. Certainly, the term was used before that.

Barry Popik's home page
Barry Popik is recognized as an expert on the origin of the term "Big Apple". Check out his site!

Here are some explanations we got when we posed this question to the world:

* John Fitzgerald, a horse race reporter in the 1920s wrote that according to stable hands, a trip to New York's racetracks was a visit to the "Big Apple" because it was the greatest reward for a thoroughbred horse. This seems to be the official answer, since the NY government supports it.

* Jazz musicians in the 1920s and 1930s used to refer to a gig in New York as "playing the Big Apple." There was a jazz club in Harlem called "the Big Apple" which is where this phrase may have originated.

* In the early 1800s, a French businesswoman in New York named Eve Claudine de Saint-Évremond had a staff of beautiful and elegant women who were referred to as "Eve's Apples." Soon the phrase grew to encompass all of New York's women.

Previously, the phrase had been linked to jazz slang, or to the popular dance named the Big Apple. The Dictionary of American Slang (Wentworth and Flexner) and The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins both trace the phrase in this way, but this only takes it back as far as the 1930s.

Answer 3

it is a slang meaning " New York "