dessert apple

English

Noun

dessert apple (plural dessert apples)

1. (horticulture, agriculture, pomology) Synonym of eating apple.
   1. (sometimes more specifically) An eating apple that is especially well suited for use as a dessert (a meal-ending course that is sweet).

Usage notes

• The narrower subsense is not always meant by speakers and writers (past and present) who use this term, whereas the core distinction originally was, and often still is, that of a table apple versus a cooking apple, baking apple, or cider apple. But the narrower sense inevitably coexists, because many listeners and readers (reasonably and predictably) parse the term in that way by default, in the absence of any explicit disabusing otherwise.