bite at the apple in English

Forms: bites at the apple [plural] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Etymology: The bite at the cherry form is the original. By the 1940s, cherry had taken on the additional meaning of "virginity" and the phrase was considered embarrassing, and so "apple" replaced "cherry" in American usage. The first recorded use of the "apple" form is in 1922. Head templates: {{en-noun|bites at the apple}} bite at the apple (plural bites at the apple)

Inflected forms

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "The bite at the cherry form is the original. By the 1940s, cherry had taken on the additional meaning of \"virginity\" and the phrase was considered embarrassing, and so \"apple\" replaced \"cherry\" in American usage. The first recorded use of the \"apple\" form is in 1922.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "bites at the apple",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "bites at the apple"
      },
      "expansion": "bite at the apple (plural bites at the apple)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of bite of the cherry."
      ],
      "id": "en-bite_at_the_apple-en-noun-pAOxdHka",
      "links": [
        [
          "bite of the cherry",
          "bite of the cherry#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly US) Synonym of bite of the cherry."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "bite of the cherry"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "bite at the apple"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "The bite at the cherry form is the original. By the 1940s, cherry had taken on the additional meaning of \"virginity\" and the phrase was considered embarrassing, and so \"apple\" replaced \"cherry\" in American usage. The first recorded use of the \"apple\" form is in 1922.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "bites at the apple",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "bites at the apple"
      },
      "expansion": "bite at the apple (plural bites at the apple)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of bite of the cherry."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "bite of the cherry",
          "bite of the cherry#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly US) Synonym of bite of the cherry."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "bite of the cherry"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "bite at the apple"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-01-19 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-01-01 using wiktextract (d1270d2 and 9905b1f). 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.

"bite at the apple" meaning in English

Noun

Inflected forms