Philadelphia
39.9528°N -75.1636°W · Q1345
3 English words in this atlas trace back to Philadelphia. It sits in United States.
The sandwich is named for the city that argues about it.
It emerged in Philadelphia in the 1930s. Which cheese belongs on it remains locally contentious.
The compliment may date from a Philadelphian who won a New York libel case.
Tradition credits Andrew Hamilton, who traveled to New York in 1735 and won John Peter Zenger's acquittal on seditious libel, a landmark for press freedom. The link to Hamilton is traditional rather than documented, and the phrase now carries a hint of sharp practice.
The city named for brotherly love picked up a second name from its garbage.
The blend swaps filth into the first syllable of Philadelphia, and it is also written Philthadelphia and Filthydelphia. Maurice Sampson II of Clean Water Action traces it to a newspaper reporter in the 1930s; the Swedish immigrant activist Sigrid Craig complained in 1936 that she was tired of hearing it applied to her adopted city. By the early 1970s it was fixed in suburban usage. Philadelphians say it about their own streets when the trash piles up, and it is still an insult when it comes from outside.