The etymology of apple has always been somewhat obscure. Pokorny (1959) noted that it was not possible to attain a single form of vocalization so he gave the following reconstructed Indo-European (IE) variants: *ābel- (*ăbel), *ābol- (*ăbol), *abel- (Pokorny, 1959, 1-2). He also believed that these forms were related by primitive kinship and were not the result of borrowing ("Obgleich eine einheitliche Grundform nicht ansetzbar ist, wird es sich beiden lat. kelt. germ. bsl. Formen nur um Urverwandtschaft und kaum um Entlehnung handeln."). This initial reconstruction has not undergone any significant change. There two current versions *ābōl and its lyrengeal variant *H2ebōl (Blažek 1995).
The principal difficulty here is the fact that this word is only attested in Balto-Slavonic, Germanic and some Celtic languages:
Old Eng. æppel, Old Frisian and Dutch appel, Old Norse eple, Old High German (O.H.G.) apful, Germ. Apfel, Gaulish avallo fruit, Old Irish ubull, Lithuanian obuolys, Russian (Rus.) jabloko, Bulgarian (Bulg.) jablo, abĕlka, jabĕlka, Slovenian (Slov.) jáblo, jábolko, Czech (Cz.) jablko, (Old Czech jablo), Slovakian (Sk.) jablko, Polish (Pol.) jabłko, Old Prussian (O.Prus.) woble (Vasmer, 1964 -1973; Trubachev, 1974; Blažek, 1995).
From the above cognates it is obvious that only the Balto-Slavonic forms closely correspond to the reconstructed IE base but, generally, this list is nothing more than a number of related words without any credible etymology to explain their origin and semantics.
Perhaps the most daring etymology was proposed by Theo Vennemann (1998) in his article Andromeda and the Apples of the Hesperides where Vennemann attempted to link apple to Semitic, particularly, the South-Eastern Semitic languages of Ethiopia. After an introduction, sketching his the theory regarding the languages of prehistoric Europe north of the Pyrenees and the Alps, Vennemann proposed that the reconstructed IE *abal could be cognate with the modern Ethiopic Ge'ez 'abāl, Tigrè habāl, Tigrinya 'abal, Amharic abal and Gurage abal, allegedly meaning genitals. According to him, this word was used to mean apple in Semitic and it was borrowed into Germanic with this meaning. The meaning apple was subsequently lost in all Semitic languages except in the named Ethiopic ones where it was replaced, due to “an awkward metaphoric shift”, by a new one - genitals, via the association of the external form of apples with testicles.
What do you think of this? Is "apple" a Semitic loan?
References:
Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (French & European Publications, 1959).
Václav Blažek, "Indo - European "apple(s)", Sborník prací Filosofické fakulty Brněnské university 44 (1995), pp. 15-20.
Max Vasmer, Etimologicheskiy slovar' russkogo yazyka (Russian Etymological Dictionary) Translated from German. Vol.1-4 (Moscow: Progress, 1964 -1973).
O.N. Trubachev, Etimologicheskiy Slovar' Slavyanskikh yazykov. Praslavyanskiy leksicheskiy fond (Etymological Dictionary of Slavonic Languages. Pra-Slavonic lexical fund) (Moscow: Nauka, 1974).
Vennemann, Theo, "Andromeda and the Apples of the Hesperides", in Karlene Jones-Bley and Angela Della Volpe and Miriam Robbins Dexter and Martin E. Huld, ed., Proceedings of the Ninth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, May 23, 24, 1997 (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series 28) (Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 1998), pp. 1-68. [Reprinted as chapter 18 in: Theo Vennemann, Europa Vasconica - Europa Semitica, ed. by Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs, 138), Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003.]
The principal difficulty here is the fact that this word is only attested in Balto-Slavonic, Germanic and some Celtic languages:
Old Eng. æppel, Old Frisian and Dutch appel, Old Norse eple, Old High German (O.H.G.) apful, Germ. Apfel, Gaulish avallo fruit, Old Irish ubull, Lithuanian obuolys, Russian (Rus.) jabloko, Bulgarian (Bulg.) jablo, abĕlka, jabĕlka, Slovenian (Slov.) jáblo, jábolko, Czech (Cz.) jablko, (Old Czech jablo), Slovakian (Sk.) jablko, Polish (Pol.) jabłko, Old Prussian (O.Prus.) woble (Vasmer, 1964 -1973; Trubachev, 1974; Blažek, 1995).
From the above cognates it is obvious that only the Balto-Slavonic forms closely correspond to the reconstructed IE base but, generally, this list is nothing more than a number of related words without any credible etymology to explain their origin and semantics.
Perhaps the most daring etymology was proposed by Theo Vennemann (1998) in his article Andromeda and the Apples of the Hesperides where Vennemann attempted to link apple to Semitic, particularly, the South-Eastern Semitic languages of Ethiopia. After an introduction, sketching his the theory regarding the languages of prehistoric Europe north of the Pyrenees and the Alps, Vennemann proposed that the reconstructed IE *abal could be cognate with the modern Ethiopic Ge'ez 'abāl, Tigrè habāl, Tigrinya 'abal, Amharic abal and Gurage abal, allegedly meaning genitals. According to him, this word was used to mean apple in Semitic and it was borrowed into Germanic with this meaning. The meaning apple was subsequently lost in all Semitic languages except in the named Ethiopic ones where it was replaced, due to “an awkward metaphoric shift”, by a new one - genitals, via the association of the external form of apples with testicles.
What do you think of this? Is "apple" a Semitic loan?
References:
Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (French & European Publications, 1959).
Václav Blažek, "Indo - European "apple(s)", Sborník prací Filosofické fakulty Brněnské university 44 (1995), pp. 15-20.
Max Vasmer, Etimologicheskiy slovar' russkogo yazyka (Russian Etymological Dictionary) Translated from German. Vol.1-4 (Moscow: Progress, 1964 -1973).
O.N. Trubachev, Etimologicheskiy Slovar' Slavyanskikh yazykov. Praslavyanskiy leksicheskiy fond (Etymological Dictionary of Slavonic Languages. Pra-Slavonic lexical fund) (Moscow: Nauka, 1974).
Vennemann, Theo, "Andromeda and the Apples of the Hesperides", in Karlene Jones-Bley and Angela Della Volpe and Miriam Robbins Dexter and Martin E. Huld, ed., Proceedings of the Ninth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, May 23, 24, 1997 (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series 28) (Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 1998), pp. 1-68. [Reprinted as chapter 18 in: Theo Vennemann, Europa Vasconica - Europa Semitica, ed. by Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs, 138), Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003.]
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