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Glite Dictionary
🌳 A tropical tree 🍈 A tropical fruit
pond apple

pond apple

9.6
A yellow oval fruit with sweet peach-like flesh that grows in swamps
  • noun
  • US
translation icon : manzana de estanque
  • She described the taste of the pond apple as sweet and aromatic.

Examples

  • Have you ever tasted a pond apple?

  • The swamp was filled with wild pond apples hanging from the trees.

  • Many animals feed on the pond apple during the tropical wet season.

  • I found a pond apple in the swamp yesterday.

  • The local children love to pick pond apples from the trees near the riverbank.

  • During our hike, we discovered that the pond apple tree was in full bloom, attracting many bees.

  • She enjoyed making smoothies with the sweet, juicy pond apples she found in the marsh.

Surface Forms

pond apple singular
pond apples plural

Morphology

pond + apple

Pond apple is a transparent compound of 'pond' (a small body of standing water) + 'apple' (a fruit), so a learner who knows those constituents can infer it denotes a type of fruit associated with ponds or swampy areas. Although they might not know the precise botanical details, the basic meaning (a fruit found in/near ponds) is directly derivable from the parts.

Etymology

Pond apple probably comes from the fruit that grows near ponds and looks like an apple, yellow and sweet inside. That's why the name now refers to the oval, fragrant 'fruit'.