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