20
How The Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple
(www.youtube.com)
For sharing interesting videos from around the Web!
Regarding Latin malum: people often have the impression that the word specifically means "apple" due to a bunch of crappy Latin textbooks. It's messier though, and the video is correct - it could be used to refer to any type of fruit, although in the absence of context you'd "default" to apples. This can be shown through synchronic evidence, like Apicius 4.3.4:
If "mala" was enough to refer to apples, why is the author specifying that those need to be "mala matiana"?
Diachronic evidence shows the same. Using Portuguese for the examples:
If "mala" was used exclusively for apples the first one wouldn't get an adjective, just like in Apicius' recipe book; and the later would've never popped up.