this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts

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It's been 30 years and I still can't get over the fact that the French word for "potatoes" is "ground apples." Have The French never had an apple? (midwest.social)
submitted 1 month ago by sxan@midwest.social to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] lugal@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

People seem to believe this so let me clarify:

Literally, “apple of [the] earth”. The word pomme used to mean "fruit" in Old French. The French construction originated, as calques, Dutch aardappel, Icelandic jarðepli, Persian سیب‌زمینی (sib-zamini), Modern Hebrew תפוח אדמה (tapúakh adamá), the rare English earthapple, German Erdapfel, etc.

wiktionary

In fact, apple was a catch all term for fruits in many languages from time to time, hence pineapple (originally meaning pinecone, later used for the exotic fruit because of similarity) or German Apfelsine (orange, literally apple from China), ...