apple (English)

Where does "apple" come from?

The English noun 'apple' descends directly from the Old English 'æppel'[1], which carried meanings ranging from the fruit itself to any type of fruit, a sphere, or an eyeball[1]. This term traces further back through Proto-West Germanic '*applu' and Proto-Germanic '*aplaz'[1] to the Proto-Indo-European reconstructed form '*h₂ébōl'[1].

Open questions

The word may not have belonged to the oldest layer of the Indo-European protolanguage because it is limited to western branches, contains a marginal phoneme, and could represent a wanderwort or substrate borrowing. [5]
Alternative proposals connect the term or its variants to Proto-Iranian, Semitic roots, or an Anatolian form with an initial s-mobile, though these remain less substantiated or disputed. [5]

Full etymology tree

apple (English), 'A common, firm, round fruit produced by a tree of the genus Malus.'
- inherited appel (Middle English), 'fruit, nut'
  - inherited æppel (Old English), 'apple'
    - inherited *applu (Proto-West Germanic), 'fruit'
      - inherited *aplaz (Proto-Germanic), 'apple, fruit'
        inherited *h₂ébōl (Proto-Indo-European), 'apple'

Ancestors

appel (Middle English)
æppel (Old English)
*applu (Proto-West Germanic)
*aplaz (Proto-Germanic)
*h₂ébōl (Proto-Indo-European)

Cognates and doublets

effél (Alemannic German)
ἄμπελος (Ancient Greek)
eipfele (Bavarian)
oupfal (Cimbrian)
apel (Crimean Gothic)
æble (Danish)
appel (Dutch)
epl (Faroese)
Apfel (German)
Appel (German Low German)
epli (Icelandic)
úll (Irish)

Descendants and derived words

papple (English)
আপেল (Assamese)
আপেল (Bengali)
އާފަލު (Dhivehi)
ཨེ་པཱལ (Dzongkha)
apo (East Futuna)
a bad tree does not yield good apples (English)
acid of apples (English)
Adam's apple (English)
African custard apple (English)
alley apple (English)
alligator apple (English)

Sources

Updated August 2026

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Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris