As it turns out… I really do like apples.

I eat a whole lot of them.  Like a  bushel.  Not in one sitting though.  I looked it up, and there are roughly 126 medium apples in a bushel (i.e.. 48 pounds).  I can go through about 4 or 5 apples a day.  Yep … in less than a month, as my math figures it, I have  managed to chomp down a bushel.

So when someone asks me …. “How do you like them apples?”  I typically say that I love them.

But I don’t think they are really asking me about my penchant to the perfect fruit.

That good old phrase. How do you like them apples.  It seems this idiom can be used to gloat a little bit.  You know… when someone wants to call attention to a small personal triumph.   It is…  kind of….  a way of puffing out your chest a little…  or even saying “So there.”

And with all good idioms… they typically come from somewhere.  Mr. & Mrs Idiom.

Seriously.  I know you want to know the origins of this one.  Just how did the expression get its start?

Some early  sources suggest it originated in World War I with the Toffee Apple.  A toffee apple was a kind of trench mortar bomb sometimes used to destroy tanks.

So… those old WWI guys would be down in the trenches… and through out one of those mortar bombs…  and then they would holler out…  “How you like them apples?”

Generally…  the person being asked usually isn’t in earshot to answer the question.

Apple comes around again in a lot of different phrases… and such.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Apple of my eye.
The Big Apple.
One rotten apple spoils the barrel.
Easy as apple pie.

On and on and on….
I think this is because apples are so very cool.  They are appealing.  Yep.  Everybody wants a piece of the pie.   And….  I think that is getting right to the core of the matter.  Hopefully, this wasn’t a fruitless endeavor.

By the way…. I wrote this on my Macintosh.

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” – George Bernard Shaw

How about them apples?