An apple is a round fruit that grows on trees, usually red, green, or yellow, with sweet or tart white flesh inside. Apples are one of the most common fruits in the world, grown in orchards from Washington State to New Zealand. You might eat one raw as a snack, baked into a pie, or pressed into cider.

The word also appears in several well-known phrases. The “apple of someone's eye” means a person they love deeply and feel proud of. In school, students sometimes bring their teacher an apple as a small gift, which is where the phrase “an apple for the teacher” comes from. When someone is called a “bad apple,” it means they're causing trouble in a group, based on the old saying that one rotten apple can spoil the whole barrel.

Apple trees have special significance in American history and folklore. Johnny Appleseed, whose real name was John Chapman, traveled across the American frontier in the early 1800s planting apple orchards. The phrase “as American as apple pie” captures how deeply this fruit is woven into American culture.

The company Apple, founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, took its name from this fruit, helping make it one of the most recognizable words in technology today.