"apple of the eye" meaning in English

See apple of the eye in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˈæp.əl.əv.ðiˈaɪ/ [US] Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-apple of the eye.wav [US] Forms: apples of the eye [plural]
Rhymes: -aɪ Etymology: From Middle English appel of the eyȝe, appel of þe ye, perhaps dissimilated from Middle English ij appel (literally “eye-apple”). More at eye-apple. Etymology templates: {{inh|en|enm|appel of the eyȝe}} Middle English appel of the eyȝe, {{m|enm|appel of þe ye}} appel of þe ye, {{der|en|enm|ij appel|lit=eye-apple}} Middle English ij appel (literally “eye-apple”), {{m|en|eye-apple}} eye-apple Head templates: {{en-noun|apples of the eye}} apple of the eye (plural apples of the eye)
  1. The eyeball or pupil; eye-apple. Categories (topical): Anatomy, Eye Related terms: apple of someone's eye
    Sense id: en-apple_of_the_eye-en-noun-WhrzicVL Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for apple of the eye meaning in English (2.3kB)

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      "name": "inh"
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    {
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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        {
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      "id": "en-apple_of_the_eye-en-noun-WhrzicVL",
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        ],
        [
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        ],
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          "eye-apple",
          "eye-apple"
        ]
      ],
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        }
      ]
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  ],
  "sounds": [
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      "tags": [
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      "name": "der"
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        "2": "eye-apple"
      },
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  "etymology_text": "From Middle English appel of the eyȝe, appel of þe ye, perhaps dissimilated from Middle English ij appel (literally “eye-apple”). More at eye-apple.",
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        "English lemmas",
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        "English terms derived from Middle English",
        "English terms inherited from Middle English",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "Rhymes:English/aɪ",
        "Rhymes:English/aɪ/6 syllables",
        "en:Anatomy",
        "en:Eye"
      ],
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.