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The noun is derived from Middle English appel (‘Malus domestica fruit or tree, apple; any type of fruit, nut, or tuber; tree bearing fruit; (figurative) ball, sphere; (Christianity) forbidden fruit in Eden’), from Old English æppel (‘apple; any type of fruit; (figurative) ball, sphere; eyeball’), from Proto-West Germanic *applu (‘apple; any type of fruit’), from Proto-Germanic *aplaz (‘apple; any type of fruit’), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ébōl, *h₂ébl̥ (‘apple’). As regards noun sense 1.4 (‘forbidden fruit’), the type of fruit eaten by Adam and Eve is not identified in the Book of Genesis in the Bible. It may have come to be identified with the apple because of the similarity between Latin mālum (‘apple’) and malum (‘evil; misery, torment; wrongdoing’). The inheritance from Germanic is clear, but the etymology of the word beyond that point is uncertain and disputed.1disputed Scholars disagree here; the competing view is quoted as the source gives it.