Other forms: apples
An apple is a round fruit, red or green, that grows on trees. Eat an apple, apple pie, an apple tree.
Apples do not come true from seed — every pip gives a different tree — so every named variety is grafted from one original tree, which means every Cox in the world is a cutting of the same plant. There are thousands of varieties and about nine in the shops. Note the apple of your eye; upset the apple cart; and that apple once meant any fruit.
1nounappleA round fruit that grows on trees.
“She packed an apple and a sandwich for lunch.”
apple is a fruit.
Old English aeppel meant any fruit or nut, not just this one. The narrowing happened in English, which is why the forbidden fruit in Eden became an apple in the retelling.
Middle English
appel
English, today
apple
Built from
From Middle English appel. 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 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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA