earthapple
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 0.00 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A Jerusalem artichoke (the tuber of Helianthus tuberosus); the plant that produces it.
noun
The fruit of the mandrake (Mandragora officinarum); the plant itself.
Example Sentences
- "The most probable account I have been able to collect is, that a vessel of Sir Walter Raleigh's, returning from Guiana, put into the west of Ireland in distress, having on board some potatoes which they called earth-apples."
- "It was supper-time on board the Stormchaser, and the sky pirates were all seated round a longbench tucking into a meal of baked snowbird and earthapple mash."
- "He finished carefully arranging a plate of fresh prawns, earthapples, and kale he'd bought special for Captain Falcon in Bangalang."
- "There were roots of some sort, also, baking like earthapples near the fire, and a basket of late berries, most of them bitter. I ate them anyway."
- "When the crickets begin to wail and the midnight Festers with wrinkles, and the dwayberries And earthapples in my wounds cluster and garrote The dewscented boughs of my surreal gaze, Then my dear, bless these tears and rise to me [...]"
Etymology
From earlier erth-apple (“tuberous root of the sowbread", also "tomato-like fruit of the mandrake”), from Middle English *erth-appel, from Old English eorþæppel (“cucumber”, literally “earth or ground-apple”), from Proto-West Germanic *erþapplu (the name of various types of fruits which grow on or below the ground; gourd, melon, squash), equivalent to earth + apple. The modern sense of "potato" is a calque of Dutch aardappel (“potato”). Compare also German Erdapfel, French pomme de terre.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *erth-appel, eorþæppel, *erþapplu