What Is That Saying About ‘Bad Apples’ Again?

I’ve been hearing people talk about “bad apples” a lot lately, so it seems like a good time to look at this idiom—what it means and where it came from. Along the way, I also found some surprising history about the word “apple” itself.

What do we mean when we talk about ‘a few bad apples’?

First, we’ve been hearing about bad apples because it’s a way that people try to say a problem isn’t widespread. For example, when a police officer is caught doing something horrible, people who defend the police department often say that one officer was just a “bad apple” or sometimes a “rotten apple.” 

And if a few more police officers are caught violating people’s rights, defenders might broaden their defense to say it’s just “a few bad apples,” implying that most of the officers are still good.

The complete saying is 'one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.'

It’s a troublesome phrase to use in that context though, at least historically, because the full idiom has a second part about spoiling the whole bunch. It usually goes something like “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch” or “a few bad apples spoil the whole barrel.” So instead of suggesting that one bad apple is an isolated problem, the idiom means that if you consistently have bad apples hanging around, the problem is going to spread.

The origin of the ‘bad apples’ idiom

Some sources say the proverb started with Chaucer, who in “The Cook’s Tale” had a character say, “It is better to take the rotten apple out of the bag than to have it rot all the other apples.” “The Cook’s Tale” was written sometime between the years 1387 and 1400, but the character who says that line says he is quoting a proverb, so it’s likely the saying was in use before then.

In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary has the earliest English use of “rotten apple” to mean “a bad person who has the potential to corrupt others” appearing in the year 1340 in a book called “Ayenbite of Inwyt.” That book was a commentary on Christian morality, and it was actually a translation from a book written in French that was published in the late 1200s.

The saying is quite old, and it’s true.

No matter the exact date, we can say with confidence that the saying is quite old. And it’s old because it’s true from a farming and produce perspective.

A bad apple really can spoil the whole bunch

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