Meaning
The person, or occasionally the thing, that someone cherishes above all others. Most often said affectionately of a child or romantic partner, and one of the oldest endearing phrases still in everyday use, surviving in registers from nursery talk to journalism. Warm and affectionate; now purely figurative, since the literal pupil sense is long obsolete. Regional use: General English.
Origin
'Apple' was a generic Old English word for fruit and round bodies, and the pupil of the eye was called its 'apple' because it was believed to be a solid globular body. Word Histories traces the earliest known use to the West Saxon translation of Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care (890s, attributed to King Alfred), applied literally to the pupil, and notes that the Old English Boethius of the same period already treats the phrase as a figure for something precious, alluding to Psalm 17:8, which the Vulgate renders as 'pupilla oculi' - simply the pupil. Wycliffe's Bible (c. 1382) carries the plea to keep the speaker as the apple of the eye in Middle English spelling. Etymonline likewise dates the expression to Old English, originally denoting the pupil, with the cherished-person sense growing from the preciousness of sight.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- apple of her eye
- apple of his eye
- the apple of one's eye
- the apple of your eye
Usage Examples
- Ever since his granddaughter started spending Saturdays at the bakery, she has been the apple of his eye.
- That battered violin is the apple of her eye; nobody else is allowed to tune it.
- Everyone in the department knew the young cellist was the apple of the conductor's eye.