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 in part to a promotional campaign by the New York tourist authorities.
Big Apple
The earliest known usage of 'big apple' appears in the book "The Wayfarer in New York" (1909), in which author Edward S. Martin writes: 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. William Safire considered this the coinage, but the "Random House Dictionary of American Slang" has described the usage as "metaphorical or perhaps proverbial, rather than a concrete example of the later slang term".