fruits in phrases – Is apple winner?
From Monday till today of this week, my company has provided free lunches. During the lunch time, we also had sort of meetings. In the meetings, Scott made a series of presentations about our new consulting services. I found a very interesting one from the meetings. He used the same expression a few times, “Golden Nugget.” In the context, I believe it was supposed to mean something like “real good core value of a company.” Am I right? I will let our other Professional Services team members add their thoughts on this. Then, my curiosity killed me so that I had to look it up in a dictionary. Then, I found the following from the urban dictionary.
The First piece of excrement that comes of out after a long constipation allowing the persons bowels to empty.
Oh no! so gross! I hope he did not mean this one in the meetings. (Wait! Nobody laughed when he said this.) I was not able to find any other good definitions as I felt from the meeting. Which one is more correct and used by people?
Speaking of the expressions I heard from the company meetings, the other day, I heard this one, “low-hanging fruit.” This means some sort of goal or target you can achieve easily. I can guess the origin of the expression. Thinking of an apple tree, it is a lot easier to pick the low-hanging ones from the tree. Any fruits hung high, it requires a ladder and a lot of efforts.
But, then I had to make sure if this one is really safe for me to use in the future meetings I would participate. So, I looked it up. You know what I found in the urban dictionary. Check this out!
Girls who are somewhat hot – but not too hot, and who often work in posiitons of high public interaction but with low-barriers-to-entry, thus making them open and attractive targets on the one hand, but often self conscious and/or harboring self esteem issues on the other. This, as a whole, makes them susceptible and quite receptive to any overtures from the opposite sex. I.e., They are the easiest of fruit to pick.
What is wrong with the urban dictionary? Is this really something I can rely on? Andrew! I do not think urban dict is my friend any more. –)
Oh, there are other expressions that have fruits in it.
1. big apple : easy one! New York City! I have no idea about the origin of this one. Does anybody know?
2. apple bottom : I learned this one from Jessy. When she was working at a clothing store, there was a jeans brand. It was “apple bottom jeans.” They are for women. Can you guess what this means? Yeah, it describes women’s butt. But, not all of them. It should be looking good from back. I know it is personal. For example, all of the male coworkers of Jessy said, “Jessy, I do not think you have apple bottom.” Well, honey, I do think you have. You got THE apple bottom! 🙂
I guess apple is the Gold medal list when it comes to the expressions with fruits in it???
Urban dictionary is correct, Scott was referring to excrement, and the goal of our new IOAs is to pick up as many girls with self confidence issues as possible, I would have figured you had a clear understanding of this after 3 presentations!
Well, I knew that! Urban dict is awesome. So then, what does IOAs stand for? Maybe like, “I Own All!”
Expressions with fruit in them:
– apple of my eye
– sour grapes
– she’s such a peach
Here’s a joke with fruit in it:
Knock knock
who’s there?
banana.
banana who?
knock knock
who’s there?
banana
banana who?
knock knock
who’s there?
orange
orange who?
orange you glad I didn’t say banana?
I found one thing about apple of my eye. (really classic one!)
Shakespeare used the phrase in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1600:
Flower of this purple dye,
Hit with Cupid’s archery,
Sink in apple of his eye
Wait! sour grapes is also very classic one. Sour grapes is an expression originating from the Aesop Fable The Fox and the Grapes, meaning “envious behavior”
She is a peach… hmm… I also found something really dirty stuff from the urban dict about this but I will take the following one as what you mean by it.
“something very lovely or wonderful; also, a very lovely and attractive woman”
Urban dictionary is indeed correct… but you have to consider the fact that english (especially slang english) is a very quickly moving target. There are lots of idioms which exist only for short times. (even more so now that the internet is around).
Many of these stranger definitions are probably very local and don’t exist over long stretches of time.
Consider the term ‘bad’ from the 1980’s… it really doesn’t mean that anymore.
Somewhat off-topic, but I just learned of a plausible “near rhyme” for orange: door hinge. Is it good?
No.
Orange (Or linge) vs door hinge (Dor Hinge)
hmm… I can feel a little…. I gotta ask you to pronounce them tomorrow to see I really can feel the rhyme or not.
I notice you threw an L in your pronunciation of “orange”. That’s very interesting. I think it would sound more like an “L” sound if you were Spanish (rolling the “R” a bit). But in America, your tongue typically wouldn’t touch the roof of your mouth when you say “orange”.
To make it rhyme closer, you have to pronounce the “H” softly in “door hinge”.
It was kind of exaggeration to include “L” in the orange. Anyway, after I hear your speaking, I “partially” agree they rhyme. 🙂
A “golden nugget” is actually what it sounds like. A nugget (lump) of gold. If you were mining for gold and found a golden nugget, you’d be happy!
And your guess about low-hanging fruit is also correct.
I’d recommend looking up via wikipedia/wiktionary before visiting urban dictionary….
I guess I should use wiktionary. But I have to admit. Urban dict is still useful to learn something you cannot learn from any other places. 🙂