You’re the apple of my eye. How do you feel when some­one says that to you? Are you fright­ened, angered, or pleased?

You should be pleased, because if you are the apple of someone’s eye, then they cher­ish or care deeply for you. They hold you in the cen­ter of their thoughts and want to please you and pro­tect you.

But where did this idiom come from, and what is the apple of your eye?

The expres­sion itself has been found as early as the ninth cen­tury, in the writ­ings of King Alfred. At that time, the pupil of the eye was thought to be a solid round object. The apple was a very com­mon round fruit, and because of the sim­i­lar appear­ance, the cen­ter of the eye became known as the apple.

The word pupil is actu­ally from Latin, appear­ing in Eng­lish in about the six­teenth cen­tury. Even if you are not a Latin scholar, I think you’ll find it inter­est­ing that the orig­i­nal Latin word was pupilla, mean­ing lit­tle doll. Why is this sig­nif­i­cant? Because the name pupil was used to label the lit­tle doll, or tiny image of your­self that you see when you look into the cen­ter of some­one else’s eye.

Since our sense of sight is very pre­cious to us and in need of pro­tec­tion, call­ing some­one the apple of my eye came to mean that the per­son was cher­ished and very pre­cious to us. In fact, we would do almost any­thing for them because they are one of the most impor­tant things in our lives.

As the fall sea­son approaches and apples are more read­ily avail­able, I wanted to be sure that you were famil­iar with this idiom. Think of some­one you care deeply for — maybe it is a spouse, a boyfriend or girl­friend, or a child. Is that per­son the apple of your eye? You would do almost any­thing for this per­son because you care for him or her so much. But have you told them how much you care?

Here is my chal­lenge to you dur­ing this fall sea­son. Each time you see an apple, I want you to use it as a trig­ger to remind you of this expres­sion. Think of the apple of your eye, who­ever it is. And, when you see an apple, I want you to tell that spe­cial per­son some­thing that you love about him or her. You may say, ” You are the apple of my eye” or you may give them a spe­cific exam­ple of some­thing you love.

Use this oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice not only say­ing this expres­sion, but show­ing that you mean it.

By the way, did you catch the pun in the pic­ture above? If so, let me know in the com­ments below!

If you are hav­ing trou­ble pro­nounc­ing the word apple or other words in this expres­sion, find out how you can get pro­nun­ci­a­tion classes for free.