Listen to the author reading this blog post.
You may have heard the cheery saying When life gives you lemons, make lemonade! It means, when something bad happens to you, take a positive attitude and use it to your advantage. (After all, lemons on their own are sour and unpleasant, but add sugar and water and you have a delicious drink!) This idiom (heard on a podcast this morning) reminded me of all the nice fruit idioms we have in the English language. I thought I’d share the best of them with you.
Starting at the beginning of the alphabet, the apple of someone’s eye is the person – usually their child or grandchild – that they love most and are most proud of:
She was the apple of her father’s eye and could do no wrong.
If you say that two things or situations are like apples and oranges or like comparing apples and oranges, you mean that they are so different, you can’t usefully compare them:
The two roles are entirely different – it would be like comparing apples and oranges.
A bad apple or a rotten apple is one bad person in a group, often one whose behaviour has a bad influence on other members of the group:
We mustn’t dismiss the entire organization because of the actions of a few bad apples.
Finally for apples, the saying the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree means that children are usually like their parents in character and behaviour:
His father tried to dissuade him from following in his political footsteps, but the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say.
That’s enough of apples! What about other fruit? In informal UK English, a banana skin is a bad or embarrassing mistake or failure, often a public one. (The image here comes from old movies and comics where a character would literally slip and fall on a banana skin.)
This isn’t the first banana skin the government has slipped on this week.
‘Cherry’ features in two nice idioms. In UK English, another bite at/of the cherry is a second chance to do something:
If you lose the game, that’s it. You don’t get another bite of the cherry.
Meanwhile, the cherry on the cake or the cherry on top of the cake is the thing that makes a situation that is already positive or successful even better:
As far as her career is concerned, the Olympic Games would be the cherry on the cake.
Finally, the idiom sour grapes is said when a person claims not to like or want something that they can’t have. It suggests the speaker doesn’t believe the person:
“Apparently, she wouldn’t have accepted the job if it had been offered to her.” “Hmm, sour grapes, I’d say.”
That concludes my fruit idioms post. Perhaps you’d like to tell me below about fruit idioms in your language? I hope this next week doesn’t give you lemons, but if it does, you know what to do with them!
Great post, loved it! 😉 Well, in Spanish we compare pears and apples (peras y manzanas), and in French, the same as in English (apples & oranges). Two coloquial expressions in Spanish : ”Ponerse como un tomate” (become red as a tomato -embarrassment/anger) and ”comerse el coco” (to eat the whole coconut (the head) – to overthink or be too worried about something).
great
I love ‘comerse el coco’! Thanks for sharing!
I loooooooooooooooooveeeeeeeeeeeed it please post more
I loved this one! An idiom that probably doesn’t involve fruit in English, but it does in Spanish, at least in Argentinian Spanish is: Si te gusta el durazno, bancate la pelusa. Literally it means: If you like peaches, put up with the fluff but, of course, what this idiom really means is that if you want to do or achieve something cool, you can’t complain about the effort. 😊
That’s a brilliant expression about peaches! Thanks for sharing.
“Saber por dónde le entra el agua al coco.” It sounds like a riddle, right? In Colombia, this colorful idiom translates to “knowing where the water enters the coconut.” But it’s not about horticulture! It’s about understanding the core of a situation, especially when things aren’t as they seem.
Imagine someone telling you a story with a few holes in it. “Saber por dónde le entra el agua al coco” means you can see those holes, you know the real details, and you understand the person’s true motivations. It’s like: “knowing what is really going on”
How interesting – I love that!
In Gujarati (one of the Indian languages) we compare someone’s adorable teeth with seeds of promogranate : “Tena danta jane dadmni kali.” (2) Grapes are sour. When some one despite their hard attempts fail to get the desired thing, they in order to save their face say “draksha khati chhe”, means they don’t want it as it is not good.
This is a great blog! I love fruit, so I never get tired when reading this. Well, in Japanese, my language, has a proverb that “Peaches and chestnuts take three years (to grow), persimmons take eight years (to grow)”ーto achieve something, you must make effort for a long time. We say it to persuade or comfort someone for patience.
Thank you for the lovely feedback! I love that idiom! We have ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ which is sort of similar. Best wishes!
Awesome post I like it a lot thank you
i love it, thank you very much. 🙂
You’re very welcome!
Persian (Farsi) has many idioms related to fruits, often used to convey deeper meanings in everyday speech. Here are a few interesting ones:
1. سیب سرخ برای دست چلاق خوبه (Sib-e sorkh baraye dast-e chelāgh khoobe)
• Literal: A red apple is good for a crippled hand.
• Meaning: Valuable things are wasted on those who can’t use them properly.
2. هر که بادمجان بکارد، بادنجان درو میکند (Har ke bādemjān bekārad, bādemjān dero mikonad)
• Literal: Whoever plants eggplants will harvest eggplants.
• Meaning: You reap what you sow (similar to the English proverb).
3. انگور خوب مال زنبور خوبه (Angoor-e khoob māl-e zanboor-e khoobe)
• Literal: Good grapes belong to good bees.
• Meaning: The best things are for those who deserve them.
4. گلابی رو که میخوری، سرشو بنداز پایین (Golābi ro ke mikhori, saresho bendāz pāyin)
• Literal: When you eat a pear, lower your head.
• Meaning: When benefiting from something, stay humble and don’t brag.
5. چغندر به هرات میبره (Choghondar be Herat mibare)
• Literal: He takes beets to Herat.
• Meaning: Doing something pointless, like carrying coal to Newcastle.
6. آش کشک خالهات هست، بخوری پاته، نخوری پاته (Āsh-e kashk-e khālet hast, bokhori pāte, nakhori pāte)
• Literal: It’s your aunt’s kashk soup; whether you eat it or not, you’re stuck with it.
• Meaning: You have no choice in the matter.
7. یه سیب بندازی هوا، هزار تا چرخ میخوره تا بیاد زمین (Ye sib bendāzi havā, hezār tā charkh mikhore tā biyād zamin)
• Literal: If you throw an apple in the air, it spins a thousand times before it lands.
• Meaning: Things can change a lot before reaching their final outcome.
These idioms are used in everyday Persian to express wisdom, humor, and cultural values.
What a wonderful selection of idioms – thank you!
I got curious about this post because in Potuguese (my first language) there is “to peel pineapples” (“descascar abacaxis). We use it when there are many problems and it is up to you to solve them, like “I am so tired of peeling pineapples in this company” (Estou tão cansado de descascar abacaxis nessa empresa). I believe it’s origin it’s because of the difficult concerning peeling a pineapple (I have tried, btw, and I would rather eat it with the spikes and everything else just to save the time)
Brilliant! I agree – a thankless task!
I loved this!
Life is just a bowl of cherries. We say this (U.S.) to mean everything is going just perfectly for someone. It can be applied as a sort of rejoicing with a friend over his life, or a sour statement about someone we bear jealousy towards, or even just another way to say life is going well for me.
A “prune-face” is an unhappy look on the face that makes people think of the dried plum.
“My fingers are raisins!” a way to say I’ve been in the water too long and my fingers are beginning to wrinkle. Children love this one.
“Apple-pie order” is a way of saying something is completely organized and tidy and ready. I think this comes from the method some cooks have of laying apple slices in an extremely ordered fashion inside the pie crust, to make sure as much as possible fruit is inside.
Thanks for a fun memory exercise and the commentors who shared from other cultures. 🙂
Thanks so much for these additions!
That is nice!
Here are some examples in Chinese culture.
1. **“桃养人，杏伤人，李子树下埋死人。”
** Peaches nourish, apricots harm, and plum trees bury the dead.”
– **Explanation**: This proverb reflects the different effects of fruits on health. Peaches are considered beneficial, apricots may be harmful to some people, and plums are believed to have potentially significant negative health impacts.
2. **“一天一苹果，医生远离我。”
** “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
– **Explanation**: This proverb emphasizes the health benefits of apples, suggesting that eating one apple a day can help prevent illnesses.
3. **“柿子挑软的捏。”**
**”Persimmons are picked when they are soft.”
– **Explanation**: This proverb metaphorically suggests that people often choose the easiest target or approach when dealing with problems.
4. **“瓜熟蒂落。”**
** “When the melon is ripe, it falls off the stem.”
– **Explanation**: This proverb metaphorically means that when things reach a certain level of development, they will naturally succeed or resolve themselves, emphasizing the importance of letting things take their course.
5. **“吃葡萄不吐葡萄皮。”**
** “Eating grapes without spitting out the skins.”
– **Explanation**: This proverb is often used to describe someone who doesn’t pay attention to details or to metaphorically illustrate a certain way of doing things.
6. **“橘生淮南则为橘，生于淮北则为枳。”**
** “Oranges grown south of the Huai River are sweet, but north of the Huai River they turn bitter.”
– **Explanation**: This proverb metaphorically illustrates the influence of the environment on things, highlighting the importance of external conditions.
7. **“吃不到葡萄说葡萄酸。”**
** “Sour grapes.”
– **Explanation**: This proverb metaphorically describes how some people belittle the value of something they cannot obtain, as a way to comfort themselves.
These proverbs not only reflect the symbolic meanings of fruits in Chinese culture but also convey wisdom and life philosophies.
These are wonderful – thank you so much for sharing!
Great post! It’s really helpful for improving my English skills!
That’s great to hear! Thank you!
very cool 😎 amazing
Thank you!
When life gives you lemons make it into sweet lemonade!
Also Love the post’ keep up the good work.