Why are crab apples so named.?!
Answers:
Scottish form is scrab or scrabbe, seemingly from a Norse source, as there is Swedish skrabba "fruit of the wild apple tree"!. This would suggest that crab and crabbe are aphetic forms of a much older word!. The other possibility is that it derives from crabbed, which itself means, etymologically, "crooked or wayward gait of a crab" and the several figurative senses that follow from that (disagreeable, contrary, ill-tempered, or crooked)!. One of those senses might have been applied to the fruit of the crab apple: not right, not pleasant, ill-flavored (because crab apples are very sour and astringent)!.
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