英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

blockbuster (n.)[blockbuster 词源字典]: also block-buster, big bomb (4,000 pounds or larger, according to some sources), 1942, from block (n.) in the "built-up city square" sense. Entertainment sense is attested from 1957. U.S. sense of "real estate broker who sells a house to a black family on an all-white neighborhood," thus sparking an exodus, is from 1955.[blockbuster etymology, blockbuster origin, 英语词源]
bowery (n.): "farm, plantation," from Dutch bowerij "homestead farm" (from the same source as bower); a Dutch word probably little used in America outside New York, and there soon limited to one road, The Bowery, that ran from the built-up part of the city out to the plantations in middle Manhattan, attested from 1787; the city's growth soon overran it, and it was noted by 1840 as a commercial district notorious for squalor, rowdiness, and low life.
Bowery Boy, the typical New York tough of a generation or two ago, named from the street which he chiefly affected .... He rather prided himself on his uncouthness, his ignorance, and his desperado readiness to fight, but he also loved to have attention called to his courage, his gallantry to women, his patriotic enthusiasm, and his innate tenderness of heart. A fire and a thrilling melodrama called out all his energies and emotions. [Walsh, 1892]
concourse (n.): late 14c., from Middle French concours, from Latin concursus "a running together," from past participle of concurrere (see concur). Originally "the flowing of a crowd of people;" sense of "open space in a built-up place" is American English, 1862.
sprawl (n.): 1719, from sprawl (v.); meaning "straggling expansion of built-up districts into surrounding countryside" is from 1955.