• shneancy@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    “apple” used to be a generic term for fruit. So it’s actually “fruit of the earth”, the French are poetic like that

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        It also explain why we here in the Nordics call oranges “appelsin”, as in a “Chinese apple”.

      • Don_alForno@feddit.org
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        13 days ago

        Great! Can’t have myths about random fruit in this otherwise totally valid, reasonable and trustworthy story about a woman that was made from a man’s rib and talked to reptiles.

            • Isoprenoid@programming.dev
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              12 days ago

              Sorry, I wasn’t explaining myself well.

              Just because a story isn’t factually true, doesn’t mean that it has no value, or negative value. There are other types of values which can supersede factual value:

              • aesthetic
              • symbolic
              • ethical
              • didactic

              Truth isn’t always about facts. Sometimes factual statements can be used as a weapon of deceit.

              • Don_alForno@feddit.org
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                12 days ago

                There are other types of value, of course. It’s just funny to specifically call the apple out for being a myth. The entire story is a myth, so they could have made it a pomelo for all I care.

        • Uruanna@lemmy.world
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          13 days ago

          Hebrew used a generic word for fruit, all languages translated that word as their version of apple which was generic at the time, and then much later, all languages changed the meaning of their word for apple, it’s not specific to French. The use of apple for one specific fruit is fairly recent - more recent than the King James Bible, even.

          I don’t know what the word in Hebrew is and if it also changed its meaning since then, though.

    • Shapillon@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Also apples used to be small, tart, and acidic.

      You wouldn’t eat them as a dessert but as a basis for brewing alcohol.

      It’s wild how much fruits changed in recent times.

      So much so that most zoo are stoppimg giving them to animals and switched to more leafy greens. They have gotten so sugary that they promoted tooth decay and obesity.

      • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Than you, I was going to say modern apples have a taste and texture nothing like apples when this name was created.