{"id":22750,"date":"2023-03-01T13:36:18","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T13:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22750"},"modified":"2023-03-01T13:54:34","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T13:54:34","slug":"falling-apples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22750","title":{"rendered":"Falling Apples"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend asked me to look into the origins of the saying <strong>An acorn doesn\u2019t fall far from the tree<\/strong>. I can only find a few examples of this saying online, but lots of examples of <strong>the apple never falls far from the tree<\/strong> and similar sayings. It refers to the idea that people inevitably share traits with or resemble their parents or family.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/carl_mueller\/15095663152\/in\/photolist-oZXdJm-5rsa6K-apxLkM-y2XJRJ-735gNc-fAFGYD-g327Uc-8FxwGV-cikqD-5vLF32-cLWHto-wGRdFY-5fznvK-8ym5Pd-qqfjFv-7fpT-mCs49-8A8Nri-fq7R6J-5rqtuz-pRuKRL-DUuXYp-4z6GrF-6HHe2T-8HR2ot-e7QwDL-hcQnpY-5qJfwR-aqmqY-7QPR1R-6VfCtj-6HMjpA-7bfFzj-8mzLjZ-6EZ5Sb-kJTSVr-kJTSE6-avsa8z-pZVMbm-gbBPEU-nzA2B-fqNFVg-dmW5oU-M9Guz-Jj6j2J-kJTBy4-5suMm3-3enMmu-grNRfK-d9ELDq\" title=\"Apple Tree\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/3925\/15095663152_fe3a81690f_z.jpg\" alt=\"Apple Tree\" width=\"640\" height=\"436\"><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phrases.org.uk\/meanings\/the-apple-never-falls-far-from-the-tree.html\">The Phrase Finder<\/a>, the origins of this saying are uncertain. The earliest known example of its use in English appears in 1830 in Benjamin Thorpe&#8217;s translation of <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/grammarofanglosa00rask\/page\/n31\/mode\/2up?q=apple+falls\"><em>Rasmus Rask&#8217;s Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Traces still exist in the daily language of the Icelanders, for instance in the proverb, eplit fellr ekki l\u00e1nt fr\u00e1 eikinni <em>the apple falls not far from the tree (the oak!).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In a letter by Ralph Waldo Emerson published in 1839, he quotes the German proverb &#8216;der Apfel f\u00e4llt nicht weit von Stamm&#8217; &#8211; \u201cAs men say the apple never falls far from the stem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 1843, <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/grammarofanglosa00rask\/page\/n31\/mode\/2up?q=apple+falls\"><em>The Bible in Spain<\/em><\/a> by George Henry Borrow includes the line:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe apple\u201d, as the Danes say, \u201chad not fallen far from the tree;\u201d the imp was in every respect the counterpart of the father, though in miniature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/english.stackexchange.com\/questions\/457206\/origin-of-the-apple-doesn-t-fall-far-from-the-tree\">English Language &amp; Usage<\/a>, a Welsh version of this saying appears in <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.it\/books?id=yXhJAAAAcAAJ&amp;pg=PA191&amp;dq=apple%20does%20not%20fall%20far&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjEtNTJr7jcAhXJYVAKHX9EAQkQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\">A Dictionary of the Welsh Language, Explained in English<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ni fell zygwyz aval o avall<br \/>\nThe apple will not fall far from the tree<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The spelling here is unusal and non-standard: z = dd and v = f, so in modern standard spelling it would be \u201cNi fell ddygwydd afal o afall\u201d, I think.<\/p>\n<p>There are also versions of this saying from Turkish &#8211; Iemisch agatsdan irak dushmas (The apple does not fall far from the tree), and Old English &#8211; Se \u00e6ppel n\u00e6fre \u00fe\u00e6s feorr ne trendde\u00f0 he cy\u00f0 hwanon he com. (The apple never rolls so far that it does not make known whence it came.)<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/m-louis\/29563156395\/in\/photolist-2bBkrza-M3oUr2-2ksUeS-djWozW-awWwee-5bQ18Q-CwxCPg-djWsAW-2jSMi7-2ksUif\" title=\"\u5b50\u72d0\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/8683\/29563156395_bd93e5c3b2_z.jpg\" alt=\"\u5b50\u72d0\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\"><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I also found an idiom with a similar meaning in Japanese: \u72d0\u306e\u5b50\u306f\u982c\u767d (kitsune no ko wa tsurajiro), which means \u201cfox cubs have white cheeks\u201d [<a href=\"https:\/\/jisho.org\/search\/%E7%8B%90%E3%81%AE%E5%AD%90%E3%81%AF%E9%A0%AC%E7%99%BD\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Do you know of examples of this saying in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend asked me to look into the origins of the saying An acorn doesn\u2019t fall far from the tree. I can only find a few examples of this saying online, but lots of examples of the apple never falls far from the tree and similar sayings. It refers to the idea that people inevitably [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,104,107,116,124,125,129,10,33,74,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-danish","category-english","category-etymology","category-german","category-icelandic","category-idioms","category-japanese","category-language","category-old-english-aenglisc","category-turkish","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22750"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22755,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22750\/revisions\/22755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}