ProbableNamed from the place
Harlem sunset
noun · first attested 1940
Raymond Chandler seems to have made this one up himself.
A fatal knife wound.
40.8090°N -73.9484°W · Q189074
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- ProbableThe conventional story is likely, with caveats.
- Attested
- 1940
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Q189074
- In English
Harlem sunset
It appears in Farewell, My Lovely in 1940, in a passage of racist dialogue about a knife fight, and the image is the red of blood against the name of New York's main Black district. Later crime writers picked it up, but it never entered general use. Harlem itself is named for Haarlem in the Netherlands, from the Dutch settlement of Nieuw Haarlem in 1658.
United States
All 153 entries 152 more words from United States
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