“apples” is a form of
apple
/ˈæpəl/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms apples appling appled
- noun The fruit of the tree Malus domestica, chiefly with a green, red, or yellow skin, cultivated in temperate climates for cidermaking, cooking, and eating.
- noun Often with a qualifying word: any fruit or vegetable, or any other thing (such as a cone or gall) produced by a plant, especially if from a tree and similar to the fruit of Malus domestica (noun sense 1.1). “custard apple rose apple thorn apple”
- noun Something which resembles the fruit of Malus domestica (noun sense 1.1) in shape (such as a ball, breast, or globe) or colour.
- noun (informal) The round, fleshy part of a cheek between the eye and the corner of the mouth when a person is smiling.
- noun (geometry) The surface of revolution of a circular arc of an angle greater than 180° rotated about the straight line passing through the arc's two endpoints.
- noun (smoking) In full apple bowl: a round bowl of a tobacco pipe; also, a tobacco pipe with such a bowl.
- noun (obsolete, baseball, slang) In full old apple: a baseball.
- noun (Christianity) According to postbiblical Christian tradition, the fruit of the tree of knowledge which was eaten by Adam and Eve despite God commanding them not to do so; the forbidden fruit.
- verb (transitive) To make (something) appear like an apple (noun sense 1.1).
- verb To become like an apple.
- verb (UK, dialectal, rare) To collect fir-cones.
- verb (obsolete except UK, dialectal) Of a flower bud or vegetable (especially a root vegetable): to grow into the shape of an apple.
- proper noun (with the) Nickname for New York City: a major city in New York, United States; more commonly in the form the Big Apple.
- proper noun (rare, countable) A female given name from English.
- proper noun (countable) A surname.
- noun A computer produced by the company Apple Inc.
Synonyms
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English appel (“Malus domestica fruit or tree, apple; any type of fruit, nut, or tuber; tree bearing fruit; (figurative) ball, sphere; (Christianity) forbidden fruit in Eden”), from Old English æppel (“apple; any type of fruit; (figurative) ball, sphere; eyeball”), from Proto-West Germanic *applu (“apple; any type of fruit”), from Proto-Germanic *aplaz (“apple; any type of fruit”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ébōl, *h₂ébl̥ (“apple”).
As regards noun sense 1.4 (“forbidden fruit”), the type of fruit eaten by Adam and Eve is not identified in the Book of Genesis in the Bible. It may have come to be identified with the apple because of the similarity between Latin mālum (“apple”) and malum (“evil; misery, torment; wrongdoing”).
The inheritance from Germanic is clear, but the etymology of the word beyond that point is uncertain and disputed. The word may show a borrowing from a non-Indo-European language, or the forms in Germanic, Celtic, Baltic, and Slavonic may all be developed from a common Indo-European base—although none of the attempts to identify cognates in other branches of Indo-European have yet met with general acceptance.
In Old English, the word originally followed the strong masculine u-stem declension, but even in early texts it shows a shift toward the more common a-stem declension (compare the nominative plural æppla beside the rare æpplas; see further A. Campbell Old Eng. Gram. (1959) §613). A possible weak by-form is also suggested by the genitive plural æpplena (instead of the expected æppla) in an isolated attestation from the first half of the 11th century.
Among the variant forms, the β forms show metanalysis (see Metanalysis).
The verb is derived from the noun.
* Old Frisian appel, Middle Dutch appel (Dutch appel), Old Saxon appul (Middle Low German appel), Old High German apful, aphul, aphel, apfel (Middle High German apfel, German Apfel),
* Old Norse epli (Icelandic epli, Faroese epli, Norwegian Bokmål eple, Norwegian Nynorsk eple, Swedish äpple, Danish æble),
* Elfdalian epple, Jamtish eppel, Scanian æple,
* Gaulish avallo, aballo- (perhaps > Latin acerabulus),
* Old East Slavic jabolon′, jablŭko (Russian яблоня (jablonja), яблоко (jabloko)),
* Old Polish jabłoń, jabłko (Polish jabłoń, jabłko).
Possibly also Latin Abella (town in Campania; compare Virgil Aeneid 7.740 maliferae ... moenia Abellae 'the walls of apple-bearing Abella').
From apple. As a surname, also an Americanized form of Appel or Apfel.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The fleshy pome or fruit of a rosaceous tree (Pyrus malus) cultivated in numberless varieties in the temperate zones.
- noun Any tree genus Pyrus which has the stalk sunken into the base of the fruit; an apple tree.
- verb To grow like an apple; to bear apples. Holland.
Etymology [OE. appel, eppel, AS. æppel, æpl; akin to Fries. & D. appel, OHG, aphul, aphol, G. apfel, Icel. epli, Sw. äple, Dan. æble, Gael. ubhall, W. afal, Arm. aval, Lith. ob, Russ. iabloko; of unknown origin.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “apple”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details