oak apple

English

Alternative forms
  • oak-apple

Noun

oak apple (plural oak apples)

  1. A spherical type of oak gall, produced by an oak gall wasp (tribe Cynipini). [from 15th c.]
    • 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, section XXV:
      [T]he small Apples which I have often observ'd to grow on the leaves of an Oak call'd Oak-apples […] are nothing but the Matrices of an Insect, as I elsewhere show.

Derived terms

Translations
oak gall — see oak gall

References
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