Meaning
A gloating, taunting rhetorical question - 'what do you think of that?' - delivered after scoring a point, springing a surprise, or handing someone an unwelcome result. Informal and cocky; the 'apples' carry no literal meaning. Mainly American, spread by film and now widely understood. Informal, cheeky, and often mock-aggressive; best kept for friendly one-upmanship. Regional use: American English.
Origin
The earliest documented use is from September 1895, in the Bryan Eagle of Texas, capping a boast about the local cotton market with 'How do you like 'them apples?' - this is also the OED's earliest citation (Popik; Mental Floss). The phrase was current among American soldiers in France during World War I: a 1918 Ogden Standard item glosses it as soldiers' slang, and 1919 regimental histories record it. A popular origin story credits the British 2-inch 'toffee apple' trench mortar of World War I, with soldiers supposedly calling the line after a hit; this is unverified - Popik notes that no citation supports the bomb origin, and the phrase demonstrably predates the war. Later boosts came from Rio Bravo (1959) and Chinatown (1974), and above all Good Will Hunting (1997), which made it a modern catchphrase.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- how about them apples
- how do you like those apples
- how'd you like them apples
Usage Examples
- When our team filed the patent first, our CEO grinned and said, 'How do you like them apples?'
- You said the recipe would never work, and it won first prize at the county fair - how do you like them apples?
- He parked his rebuilt roadster right outside his old boss's window: how do you like them apples?