Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ébōl Proto-Germanic *aplaz Proto-West Germanic *applu Old English æppel Middle English appel English apple 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. cognates Cognate with: * 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, * Crimean Gothic apel, * Gaulish avallo, aballo- (perhaps > Latin acerabulus), * Old Irish abal, ubal, ubul (Irish úll), * Old Welsh afall, afal (Welsh afal, afall), * Old Prussian woble, wobalne, * Lithuanian obelis, obuolys, * Latvian ābele, ābols, ābolis, * Old Church Slavonic jablanĭ, * 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').

Adam's apple • apple of the eye • apple-green • applewood • CBer • malus • pome