英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

apple [apple 词源字典]: apple: [OE] Words related to apple are found all over Europe; not just in Germanic languages (German apfel, Dutch appel, Swedish äpple), but also in Balto-Slavonic (Lithuanian óbuolas, Polish jabtko), and Celtic (Irish ubhall, Welsh afal) languages. The Old English version was æppel, which developed to modern English apple.

Apparently from earliest times the word was applied not just to the fruit we now know as the apple, but to any fruit in general. For example, John de Trevisa, in his translation of De proprietatibus rerum 1398 wrote ‘All manner apples that is, “fruit” that are enclosed in a hard skin, rind, or shell, are called Nuces nuts’. The term earth-apple has been applied to several vegetables, including the cucumber and the potato (compare French pomme de terre), and pineapple (which originally meant ‘pine cone’, with particular reference to the edible pine nuts) was applied to the tropical fruit in the 17th century, because of its supposed resemblance to a pine cone.
[apple etymology, apple origin, 英语词源]
pine cone (n.): 1690s, from pine (n.) + cone (n.). An earlier word for it was pine nut (Old English pinhnyte); also see pineapple.
pineapple (n.): late 14c., "pine cone," from pine (n.) + apple. The reference to the fruit of the tropical plant (from resemblance of shape) is first recorded 1660s, and pine cone emerged 1690s to replace pineapple in its original sense except in dialect. For "pine cone," Old English also used pinhnyte "pine nut."