{"product_id":"the-city-in-slang-new-york-life-and-popular-speech","title":"The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe American urban scene  and in particular New Yorks  has given us a rich cultural legacy of slang words and phrases  a bonanza of popular speech. Hot dog  rush hour  butter-and-egg man  gold digger  shyster  buttinsky  smart aleck  sidewalk superintendent  yellow journalism  breadline  straphanger  tar beach  the Tenderloin  the Great White Way  to do a Brodie--these are just a few of the hundreds of popular words and phrases that were born or took on new meaning in the streets of New York. In The City in Slang  Irving Lewis Allen traces this flowering of popular expressions that accompanied the emergence of the New York metropolis beginning in the early nineteenth century  providing in effect a lexicon of popular speech about city life as well as a unique account of the cultural and social history of Americas greatest city. He shows how this vocabulary arose from city streets  often interplaying with vaudeville  radio  movies  comics  and the popular songs of Tin Pan Alley. Some terms of great pertinence to city people today have unexpectedly old pedigrees. Rush hour was coined by 1890  for instance  and rubberneck dates to the late 1890s and became popular in New York to describe the busloads of tourists who craned their necks to see the tall buildings and the sights of the Bowery and Chinatown. The Big Apple itself (since 1971 the official nickname of New York) appeared in the 1920s  though first in reference to the citys top racetracks and to Broadway bookings as pinnacles of professional endeavor. Allen also tells fascinating stories behind once-popular slang that is no longer in use. Spielers  for example  were the little girls in tenement districts who danced ecstatically on the sidewalks to the music of the hurdy-gurdy men and  when they were old enough  frequented the dance halls of the Lower East Side. Following the trail of these words and phrases into the citys East Side  West Side  and all around the town  from Harlem to Wall Street  and into the haunts of its high and low life  The City in Slang is a fascinating look at the rich cultural heritage of language about city life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44948100775989,"sku":"ByrdShop_0195075919","price":60.7,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780195075915.jpg?v=1770038167","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-city-in-slang-new-york-life-and-popular-speech","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}