Quizzes & Puzzles3 mins ago
how do you like them apples ?
3 Answers
anyone know the origin. ?
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The idiom - "How do you like them apples?" - is certainly older than the film Good Will Hunting. Here's a possible origin from a website (somewhat 'cleaned up' by me!)...
"In World War I, something called a Stokes gun fired mortars resembling apples with a stick in them, so they were often referred to as Toffee Apples.
In the film Rio Bravo in 1959, a guy tosses a hand grenade and says "How do ya like them apples?"...as Shaney's link above says.
I'm guessing like most sayings from back then, it was something guys in the war said as a joke when they tossed grenades into the enemy trenches, as if to imply the enemy would be stupid enough to think grenades were apples."
As far as the actual origin of the saying goes, here's a quote about it..."'Used ironically since the late 1920s' according to the Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings by Gregory Y. Titelman.
So there's an actual book reference dating it to the 1920s, an era famous for its surge of creativity of imaginative slang phrases in America...the bee's knees, the cat's pyjamas, the gnu's shoes...and so on. That's probably as close to an actual 'origin' as you are likely to get.
It means some small victory or put-down against an opponent in the USA and is very similar to the British phrase, "Put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
"In World War I, something called a Stokes gun fired mortars resembling apples with a stick in them, so they were often referred to as Toffee Apples.
In the film Rio Bravo in 1959, a guy tosses a hand grenade and says "How do ya like them apples?"...as Shaney's link above says.
I'm guessing like most sayings from back then, it was something guys in the war said as a joke when they tossed grenades into the enemy trenches, as if to imply the enemy would be stupid enough to think grenades were apples."
As far as the actual origin of the saying goes, here's a quote about it..."'Used ironically since the late 1920s' according to the Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings by Gregory Y. Titelman.
So there's an actual book reference dating it to the 1920s, an era famous for its surge of creativity of imaginative slang phrases in America...the bee's knees, the cat's pyjamas, the gnu's shoes...and so on. That's probably as close to an actual 'origin' as you are likely to get.
It means some small victory or put-down against an opponent in the USA and is very similar to the British phrase, "Put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
1 to 3 of 3
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