U.S. [f. TENDER a. + LOIN sb.]
1. The tenderest or most juicy part of the loin of beef, pork, etc., lying under the short ribs in the hind quarter, and consisting of the psoas muscle; the fillet or ‘undercut’ of a sirloin. Also attrib.
1828. in Webster.
1869. T. W. Higginson, Army Life (1870), 37. Is it customary to help to tenderloin with one’s fingers?
1884. G. Pomeroy Keese, in Harper’s Mag., July, 299/1. The division is made into the various pieces here named,… viz., loins, ribs,… hams, shoulders, tenderloins, striploins, sirloins, butts, rump butts, strips, rounds, and canning beef.
1906. Breakfast Menu, S. Y. Argonaut, 10 July. Tenderloin Beefsteaks.
2. slang. In full tenderloin district: applied to the police district of New York which includes the great mass of theaters, hotels, and places of amusement; thence extended to similar districts of other American cities.
Understood to have reference to the large amount of ‘graft’ said to be got by the police for protecting illegitimate houses in this district, which rendered it the ‘juicy part’ of the service.
1895. in Funk’s Stand. Dict.
1898. N. York Voice, 6 Jan., 4/3. If laws generally suitable to a city do not suit some Slavic, Polish, or other quarter, or some ‘tenderloin’ district, the local police must pass upon those laws.
1907. Amer. Trial, in Daily Chron., 9 Feb., 5/3. This loose tattle of the Tenderloin.
1908. H. Train, True Stories Crime, xi. 317. Apart from a handsome weekly stipend to his sister, Hummel’s money all went into the Tenderloin or the race-track.
