apaldr

rs, m. pl. rar, [O. H. G. aphaltrâ; A. S. apuldre; Dan. abild; Swed. apel], doubtless a southern word, the inflective syllable dr being a mutilation of ‘tré,’ arbor, a word now almost extinct in Germany, (for a homely, common word such as ‘tré’ could not have been corrupted in the native tongue);—apaldr thus, etymologically as well as properly, means an apple-tree; fruits and fruit-trees were doubtless imported into Scandinavia from abroad; the word appears only in the later heroic poems, such as the Hkv. Hjörv. 6; the verses in Sdm. 5 are in a different metre from the rest of the poem, and probably interpolated, Fas. i. 120; epli á apaldri, Sks. 106; tveir apaldar (with the radical r dropped), Fas. iii. 60; apaldrs flúr, Karl. 200, 311: as the etymological sense in the transmuted word soon got lost, a fresh pleonastic compound was made, viz. apaldrs-tré.