May 5, 2023 - The Attorney General of Alabama, who was denied the Democratic nomination for Governor, was furious. He denounced the people around his opponent as “a bunch of sleazebags. You can see that in a New York minute”.
“If there was any hint of impropriety”, a Dallas police official, eschewing the subjective, was quoted as saying 1980, “They’d be on us in a New York minute”.
In a 1983 television movie, “A Killer in the Family”, someone says of the brutish father played by Robert Mitchum, “He’d kill you in a new York minute”.
“Welcome to Houston”, wrote Forbes magazine in 1983, “where lizard-skin boots go with pin stripes, and business is done quicker than a New York minute”.
The phrase, evidently a Southernism used with particular frequency in Texas, was given further national currency as the title of a song by Ronnie McDowell that made the country music top 40 in 1985. The song contains a second example of a place name used as an attributive noun: “I’d make love to you in a New York minute, and take my Texas time doing it”. But what does a New York minute mean?
Well, a little research into the matter discovered that the phrase was originated in 1967 as a response to a survey for a Dictionary of American English. One question asked was to fill in the blank after, “I’ll be ready in….” to which a Jasper, Texas policeman wrote “a New York Minute”. It is a reference to the frenzied and hectic pace of New Yorkers’ lives. A New Yorker does in an instant what a Texan would take a minute to do.
Johnny Carson once said, “It’s the interval between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn.” I suppose that we could sum it up by saying “It is an imaginary measurement of time that indicates an extreme quickness, lending itself to the fast-paced lifestyle associated with New York City.”
A person was once quoted, “When I was in the Bronx, I got mugged, shot, raped, and murdered in a New York minute. In Detroit it would take at least two minutes.”
So, there you have it. A New Yorker does in an instant what a Texan would take a minute to do. I thought it very interesting that a Texan apparently was the originator. Just leave it to us Texans.
