mad apple
- noun
- Archaic
:
berenjena
- I love cooking with mad apple in my pasta dishes.
Examples
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Today, recipes sometimes refer to eggplant as mad apple in historical context.
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In 18th-century texts, the mad apple is frequently mentioned as a curious imported plant.
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Early botanists mistrusted the mad apple, believing it to be unhealthy to eat.
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Have you ever tried a mad apple salad?
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Early botanists mistrusted the mad apple, believing it to be unhealthy to eat.
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In 18th-century texts, the mad apple is frequently mentioned as a curious imported plant.
-
Today, recipes sometimes refer to mad apple in historical context.
Synonyms
54
1.0
A purple vegetable with shiny skin that you can eat
3
5.1
A dark purple vegetable with smooth skin that you cook and eat
1
8.4
A purple vegetable like an eggplant that you cook and eat
A plant that produces large glossy purple or white fruits called eggplant
A small round eggplant that people eat as a vegetable in West Africa
A short upright plant that grows large glossy purple eggplants used as a vegetable
Surface Forms
Morphology
mad + apple
The meaning 'eggplant' cannot be predicted from the literal constituents 'mad' (crazy) and 'apple' (fruit); there is no compositional or metaphorical logic linking those words to the vegetable. This is a historical/lexicalized name rather than a transparent descriptive phrase, so learners who know the parts would still not infer the intended meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
Mad apple is an old name for the eggplant. People long ago used apple for strange foreign fruits, and they called this round, shiny vegetable mad because they feared it could make you 'mad' or sick, so the name came to mean the eggplant.