Meaning
A child tends to grow up resembling their parents in character, behaviour or appearance, for better or worse. It is usually said of a conspicuous family trait and can be admiring or critical depending on the trait in question. Conversational and typically affectionate, though it can carry a sting when pointing out an inherited flaw. Regional use: General English; most common in American English.
Origin
Although it sounds ancient, the saying has no biblical source. It entered English in the 1830s as a translation of continental proverbs: Benjamin Thorpe's 1830 rendering of Rask's Anglo-Saxon grammar quotes an Icelandic proverb about the apple not falling far from the tree; Ralph Waldo Emerson, in a letter printed in 1839, gave the German 'der Apfel faellt nicht weit vom Stamm' as the apple never falling far from the stem; and George Borrow's The Bible in Spain (1843) credited the saying to the Danes. An 1842 English translation of the Swedish novelist Fredrika Bremer contains the direct form. The ultimate origin is an open question, with earlier witnesses variously crediting Icelanders, Germans and Danes; the phrase took root chiefly in American English, where it remains more common than elsewhere.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- the apple does not fall far from the stem
- the apple doesn't roll far from the tree
- the apple falls not far from the tree
- the apple never falls far from the tree
Usage Examples
- Both of them interrupt constantly; the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
- When the boy dismantled a radio at the age of six, everyone said the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, since his father was an engineer.
- She argues about every call, just as her mother did in the union; the apple never falls far from the tree.