Page "Big Apple" Paragraph 4

The earliest citation for " big apple " is the 1909 book The Wayfarer in New York, by Edward 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.