# How did they get the name "crab apples"?



## Grandmotherbear (May 15, 2002)

Hmm...Grandfatherbear asked the question, and I have no idea. I know at one time plants were called "horse" whatevers if they were large or strong- hence "Horseradish"...
But crabapples?
Our Everest crab by the way has seven little swellings where the blssoms dropped away!


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## kitaye (Sep 19, 2005)

Story I heard was they made your stomach feel like a crab was pinching you on the inside, if you ate to many off the tree. <shrug> Don't know if it is true but sounds reasonable.


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## Ravenlost (Jul 20, 2004)

crab apple

â¢ noun a small, sour kind of apple. 

â ORIGIN perhaps an alteration of Scots and northern English scrab.
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/crabapple

Origin of the term crab apple?

The crab apple is actually the wild apple, source of all domestic apples grown today. There are two thoughts about the origin of crab in this sense. The first notes that the Scottish form is scrab or scrabbe, seemingly from a Norse source, as there is Swedish skrabba "fruit of the wild apple tree". This would suggest that crab and crabbe are aphetic forms of a much older word. The other possibility is that it derives from crabbed, which itself means, etymologically, "crooked or wayward gait of a crab" and the several figurative senses that follow from that (disagreeable, contrary, ill-tempered, or crooked). One of those senses might have been applied to the fruit of the crab apple: not right, not pleasant, ill-flavored (because crab apples are very sour and astringent).

Whatever crab apple's origin, it dates from 1712, while the term crab "crab apple" dates from the early 15th century. Crabbed dates from about 1300. Feeling crabby now? That dates from the late 18th century. Thomas Paine used it in his Common Sense: "The narrow and crabby spirit of a despairing political party." 
http://www.takeourword.com/TOW174/page2.html


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## Chris mcmahon (Jan 22, 2021)

I woul put money on it coming from the Scottish gaelic word cruiadh, meaning hard, anyone who has ever eaten one will understand why


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## stickysister (Jul 29, 2020)

Crab apple pie is very good and especially when you’re in a sour mood.


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