this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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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 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

We also have a potato-like : word "patate". "Pomme de terre" is déformation of "parmetière" from the name of M.Parmentier who introduce potatoes to the french population.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks 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), ...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

That's actually not true, 'ground apple' is a common name for different sorts of tubers in a number of different languages, going back to the latin 'malum terrae'.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

That is news to me. Never thought to dig too deeply into my French studies in middle and high school (two decades ago), and so "apple of the earth" was just appropriate. Like, yeah, why wouldn't it be apple of the earth?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Really? That's fantastic! I didn't know that. How awesome!