Meaning
A proverb claiming that eating an apple every day keeps you healthy enough to rarely need a doctor. It is quoted both as folk health advice and, more often, as a cheerful cliche about the value of good habits and simple, wholesome food, sometimes extended jokingly to other daily routines. Proverbial and usually half-joking; fine in speech and light writing. Modern nutrition supports apples as healthy food but not the literal claim that they eliminate doctor visits. Regional use: General English (British in origin).
Origin
The earliest known version appeared in Notes and Queries in February 1866, recorded by J. P. Phillips as a Pembrokeshire proverb: 'Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread.' Rhyming variants circulated around 1900, and in 1913 Elizabeth Wright's Rustic Speech and Folk-lore printed a Devonshire dialect form ('Ait a happle avore gwain to bed, An' you'll make the doctor beg his bread') alongside the more popular version, 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away' - which the Phrase Finder treats as the first appearance of the standard form. Wikipedia, however, cites an earlier print example - the Wrexham and Denbighshire Advertiser of 26 November 1887, where a speaker already calls the modern wording an old saying - so the standard form was in circulation in Wales in the late 1880s. Note also that apple was long a generic word for any round tree fruit, so the original rhyme promoted fruit in general rather than apple-specific medicine.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- an apple a day
- eat an apple on going to bed and you'll keep the doctor from earning your bread
Usage Examples
- My grandmother still chops fruit into my breakfast every morning, insisting an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
- He packed an apple in his bag every day at college, joking that an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
- The school's free fruit scheme leans on the old advice that an apple a day keeps the doctor away.