Apple of one’s eye
(PW)
Someone special, usually a son or daughter
Although he loves his son, his daughter is the apple of his eye.
(MW)
one that is highly cherished
(usingEnglish)
Something or, more often, someone that is very special to you is the 'apple of your' eye.
(thePhraseFinder)
Meaning
Originally meaning the central aperture of the eye. Figuratively it is something, or more usually someone, cherished above others.
Origin
'The apple of my eye' is exceedingly old and first appears in Old English in a work attributed to King Aelfred (the Great) of Wessex, AD 885, entitled Gregory's Pastoral Care.
Shakespeare used the phrase in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1600:
Flower of this purple dye,
Hit with Cupid’s archery,
Sink in apple of his eye
It also appears several times in the Bible, for example, Deuteronomy 32:10 (King James Version, 1611)
He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.
and Zechariah 2:8:
For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye.
The phrase was known from those early sources but became more widely used in the general population when Sir Walter Scott included it in the popular novel Old Mortality, 1816:
"Poor Richard was to me as an eldest son, the apple of my eye."
See also - phrases coined by Sir Walter Scott.
There are many sources for the phrases and sayings that colour our language. One important source is the Bible, from which we get 'by the skin of your teeth', 'from strength to strength' and many more. Whether we view these as English phrases is debatable as the first English translation of the Bible was a thousand years or more after the writing of the original biblical texts. Wycliffe's translation, circa 1392, is the first version that brought the Bible to the English-speaking world - apart from that small number of scholars who had read the previous Latin versions and discussed them in English. Whatever we think about the Englishness of translated biblical phrases even they pale next to the single most prolific coiner of English - Shakespeare. To use his own words from All's Well That Ends Well:
A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;
The list of phrases coined by the Bard of Avon is very long - 'foul play' and 'fair play', 'in a pickle' and 'in stitches', 'high time' and lie low' and many more.
If Shakespeare and the Bible are leading the Premiership; who is top of the First Division? Chaucer? Dickens? Well, it's neither of them - step forward the Scottish poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). While there are collective works which have brought us more idioms and phrases - The Book of Common Prayer for example, Scott is the individual author who can claim to come second - if a distant second - after Shakespeare.
Nor is Sir Walter regarded as the most highly innovative of writers. Much of his prolific output calls on old songs and tales that he learned at his grandmother's knee. He was no plagiarist though and is now thought of as the inventor of the historical novel. He coined several phrases that are now in everyday use. Or at least, as was his style, he adapted existing texts and brought the phrases to the public attention. At this distance in time it's quite hard to tell just how much was the transformation of inherited materials and how much was pure invention. Take the phrase 'caught red-handed' for example. 'Redhand' was an existing Scottish legal term meaning 'in the act of crime'. It's a small step for a Scottish author from 'redhand' to 'caught red-handed'. Nevertheless, without Scott we wouldn't have the phrase.
Other phrases of which Scott is either the father or the midwife:
Cold Shoulder
Blood is thicker than water
Flotsam and jetsam
Go berserk
Infra dig
Lock stock and barrel
Nail your colours to the mast
Savoir faire
Strain at the leash
The apple of my eye
The back of beyond
Tongue in cheek
Wide berth
