1533: earth-apple and chamomile Feb 23, 2019

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As has been covered a few times here before, 'apple' has given its name to many different varieties of fruits and vegetables in many different languages around the world, from 'apelsin' meaning 'orange' in Swedish literally translating to 'china-apple', as well as both 'pomme de terre' in French and תפוח אדמה in Hebrew translating literally as 'apple of the earth' but meaning 'potato'. However, this is also true historically of things that don't even have the same shape or size of an apple at all. The word 'chamomile' comes to English via French and Latin from the Greek 'khamaimēlon' (χαμαίμηλον) which also means ‘earth-apple’. In this case however, it is not from a visual resemblance, but because the flowers apparently spelt like apple. For more about the difficultly in describing smells, watch this video: https://youtu.be/3zz9Hf2KUbg

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