Adam 39;s Apple Biology

[Rocki Eibl]

TheAdam's apple: it's neither an apple nor is it possessed exclusively by people named Adam. We'll talk about why that is, plus another linguistic conundrum: how did 'physician' become a word for "doctor" while 'physicist' stayed in the realm of matter and energy?

Emily Brewster:Coming up on Word Matters, the puzzling name of the human laryngeal protuberance and the history of physician. I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster, in collaboration with New England Public Media. On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, Peter Sokolowski, and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point. Welcome to anatomy and physiology week on Word Matters. First up, the Adam's apple. It is neither an apple, nor is it the possession only of people named Adam. How did this anatomical feature get its name? I'll take a look at this one.

Emily Brewster:Yes, yes it does. In the story of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were living there very happily. There was a tree in the middle of the garden, The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and God told them, "You can eat anything in this whole garden, but don't eat what grows on this tree." Then a serpent came and tempted Eve, said "You really should try." So she did, and then she got Adam to try and then everything has been terrible ever since. So, it's technically in the Bible, it's described as a fruit generally, but in art, going back hundreds and hundreds of years, and in a more general sense of the term, it's often described as an apple. The fruit that they ate of, the fruit that grew on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, was an apple.

So, Adam's apple has historically, there's been this idea that it somehow is called an Adam's apple because maybe Adam ate this apple and it got lodged in his throat, because it was this terrible sin. It was this crime against God to eat this fruit and it got stuck there. So, that is an idea that people have had going back as far as the early 18th century, that this is really the origin of the term Adam's apple, but it has nothing to do with that at all.

Emily Brewster:Yes, the term Adam's apple, long before it referred to the laryngeal protuberance, was used as a term to refer to any number of different kinds of fruits. The term apple was used really broadly before the infusion of French onto the English language, the imposition of so many French words onto the English language. After The Norman Invasion, the word apple was used as a general term for referring to any fruit. Then because of French, we got the word fruit. So, apple became specialized as being a particular kind of fruit. Although apple also applied very broadly in a number of different languages, but before an Adam's apple was the laryngeal protuberance, it also referred to plantains, citrons, pomelos. The idea of them being "Adam's" apples was that they were treasured. They were really special. They were fruit as if it had come from the Garden of Eden. These are fruits that are so wonderful that Adam may have eaten them before the fall.

Ammon Shea:Oh, so it's a different use of the genitive. It's Adam's apple that he has been holding on for special occasion, and won't give you any no matter how much you ask, rather than Adam's apple that he swallowed and choked on.

Emily Brewster:The pomegranate. And the reason this is key is that in the medieval times, before we had the word Adam's apple for referring to the Laryngeal protuberance, there were Arab medical writers who were giving names to various anatomy by way of analogy. And they settled on pomegranate for the reference to the Adam's apple. They called this laryngeal protuberance a pomegranate. And we don't know why these Arab medieval writers used that as an analogy. Did it have to do with the texture or did it have to do with the kind of significance of the pomegranate in lore? It's a very evocative fruit in a number of different literary...

Emily Brewster:And also, the Prophet Muhammad reportedly recommended eating pomegranates. So we don't know why, but these Arab medieval writers chose the word pomegranate to refer to the Laryngeal protuberance, which then English writers translated not as pomegranate, but they translated it as Adam's apple because pomegranate was also called Adam's apple.

Neil Serven:Now I know the French word pomme is "apple," right? And so you see apple kind of invoked in the names of these other fruits in different languages or vegetables, or what do you call them? Pomme de terre is what they call a potato in France. It's literally an apple of the earth. I've heard a tomato called a love apple sometimes. I think, somehow in the name pineapple, apple factors in there somehow, and in its name, obviously, but it's not really related to the apple I don't think in any way. So you can kind of see these other areas where apple is like the go-to name for the fruit. And then, these other fruits or vegetables are sort of based off of the idea of the apple. So apple just kind of serves as a general name for fruit in some way.

Emily Brewster:But the Adam's apple has more to do with the pineapple than it has to do with the Garden of Eden. The internet will tell you differently, like that story about it being a bit of the Edenic apple lodged in all you poor boys' throats, that's out there as, as a myth still being repeated to this day.

Neil Serven:I remember playing the game Operation as a kid and the Adam's apple was one of the things you had to remove. And the little piece was in the guy's throat and it was shaped like an apple, I think, with a bite taken out of it.

Ammon Shea:Does Eve have any fruit? Because I know that sometimes we also list Adam's fig as another For the plantain. And there are some other Adam's fruits that we come across. But does Eve have any fruits?

Emily Brewster:You're listening to Word Matters. I'm Emily Brewster. We'll explore the origins of physician after the break. Word Matters is produced by Merriam Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.

Peter Sokolowski:I'm Peter Sokolowski. Join me every day for the Word of the Day, a brief look at the history and definition of one word available at merriam-webster.com or wherever you get your podcasts. And for more podcasts from New England Public Media, visit the NEPM podcast hub at nepm.org.

Emily Brewster:Behold, the words physician and physicist. One refers to someone who practices medicine and one refers to someone who thinks professionally about matter and energy. Why all those letters in common and where does the word doctor fit in? Here's Peter Sokoloski with the story behind physician and physicist.

Peter Sokolowski:We in the dictionary trade tend to concentrate more on new words coming into the language than those words that are sort of quietly leaving the language. And this makes perfect sense that we're sort of attracted to what's new, but sometimes the relics of these older words sort of hiding in plain sight can tell us a story about how English has evolved. And so a case in point is if you take categories, a scientist studies science, a dentist applies dentistry, a plumber works with plumbing, but why is it that a person who practices medicine is called a physician? And that's a sort of interesting question that gets back into kind of early modern science, but also the shifts in English that happened at that time. It goes back to the fact that in the early modern period or the late medieval period, the word physic was used to mean the practice of healing disease.It was also used for the word medicine, essentially, a remedy for disease. So physic, and we actually see that sometimes in Shakespeare, for example, a physic was actually a medicine or a dose of medicine. And this is all kind of pre-modern ideals, of course, on ideas of what medicine was. In Shakespeare's day, the word physic meant "medicine" and physician was used as we do occasionally as in "one who practices medicine." But for example, Hamlet says, "This physic but prolongs thy sickly days." So physic meaning "medicine." And it's an interesting point to see that physician and physic were sometimes used as a personification. So there's the Thomas Nashe poem called "The Litany in Time of Plague," which has a kind of resonance to us today, and it goes, "Rich men trust, not in wealth, gold cannot buy you health physic himself must fade, all things to end are made. The plague full Swift goes by, I am sick, I must die." An amazing piece.

Peter Sokolowski:Well, exactly. It comes in a bit later. So the term medicine first was a synonym for that "remedy" use of physic. And the two words have co-existed for centuries. And it wasn't until the 18th century that we get this idea of physics in the modern sense of the science. We see in Nathan Bailey's dictionary, a famous dictionary from 1725. And this was the dictionary among other things that was maybe the biggest, most comprehensive dictionary before Samuel Johnson's and a really well-known dictionary. His entry for physic included this little note that said "in a more limited and improper sense, it is applied to the science of medicine." We have this sort of judgy improper usage note from Bailey, which shows you in the 18th century, as we moving into the sort of scientific modern period, that physic no longer meant "medicine" or was stigmatized in some ways.

But what happened at that time, what we saw in the 18th century was the sort of moment of scientific and cultural and linguistic change. This is when chemistry separated from alchemy and when astrology separated from astronomy, and this is when the word biology was coined, it actually came about in the 1700s. And physics in that modern sense became restricted to the study of matter and energy rather than medicine or living things. And it's interesting that even in Webster's dictionary, 1828, he defines physic as "the art of healing diseases." And then has a note. "This is now generally called medicine." So we can actually watch in the record, that is to say in the older dictionaries, a word fading away. And what you got next was this distinction between a physician and a physicist. Because physician was associated with physic, physicist was coined to be associated with physics.

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