Old English æppel, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch appel and German Apfel.

• Originally the Old English word apple could be used to describe any fruit. The forbidden fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is generally thought of as an apple, and pictured as such, but the 1611 King James Version of the Bible simply calls it a fruit. The apple is the predominant fruit of northern Europe, and many common phrases involve it. A rotten apple (or a bad apple) is someone who is a bad influence on the rest of a group, from the idea of a rotten apple spoiling other fruit. The idea can be traced back at least as far as the days of the early printer William Caxton in the 15th century. The apple of your eye was once a term for the pupil, which people used to think of as a solid ball. They later applied the expression to anything considered to be similarly delicate and precious. The proverb an apple a day keeps the doctor away dates from the 19th century, as does the alternative form ‘eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread’. The Australian expression it's (or she's) apples means ‘everything is fine, there is nothing to worry about’. This derives from apples and rice (or apples and spice), rhyming slang for ‘nice’. Another example of rhyming slang is apples and pears for ‘stairs’. The city of New York has been known as the Big Apple since the 1920s, possibly from the idea that there are many apples on the tree but New York is the biggest. Applet [1990s] is an unconnected word, being computer jargon formed from ‘application’ and the ending for ‘little’ -let.