656: Apple Sep 24, 2016

Apples are wonderful and have versatile purposes in cooking. Moreover, the word apple has had wonderfully versatile uses in language. 'Æppel' in Old English meant 'apple' but also any general 'fruit'. For example, 'dates' were 'fingeræppla' (finger-apple) and 'cucumbers' were 'eorþæppla' (earth-apple). Even more recently than Old English, this happened with the European discovery of 'pineapple' in the Age of Enlightenment. The French word for 'apple', 'pomme' has a similar uses, except 'pomme de terre' (apple of the earth) is a potato. In the Middle Ages, 'oranges' were 'pomme de l'orenge' (apple of the orange tree), and still in Swedish oranges are 'apelsin' (China-apple). This modern misunderstanding of what an apple is won't ever be too serious, but anyone who reads Genesis will see that the fruit which Eve and Adam eat is not a red-delicious or granny smith or any kind of apple as English-speakers think of today, but just simply an unspecified type of fruit.