apple [OE] Originally the Old English word apple could be used to describe any fruit, as well as referring specifically to an apple. 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. Forms of the word are found in most Indo-European languages, but its exact source is disputed. A rotten apple (or a bad apple) [ME] is someone who is a bad influence on the rest of a group, from the idea of a rotten apple spoiling other fruit. The apple of your eye [OE] 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 [M20th] 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’ [M19th]. The city of New York has been known as the Big Apple since the 1920s. How do you like them apples dates from the end of the 19th century, while sure as God made little apples is late 18th century.