Learn English – Etymology of “to be like” meaning “to say”

I'm not sure about the very origin of the saying and I'm inclined to think it's probably lost for ever.

What I can confirm though are the following points:

• Yes the Old English word for apple ("æppel") was a generic term for any kind of fruit. Just as the ancestor of deer (deor) meant any kind of wild animal (see German "Das Tier").

• This is not a phenomenon limited to English but is already true for instance in Greek where μῆλον pronounced "melon" was a generic term for any kind of fruit growing on trees. For instance μηλοπέπων ("melopepon" ripe fruit => melon), μῆλον Αρμενιακόν ("melon armeniakon": Armenian fruit => apricot), μῆλον Κυδώνιον ("melon kudonion": fruit from Cydonia => quince), μῆλον Μηδικόν ("melon medikon": fruit from Media/Assyria => citrus), μῆλον Περσικόν: fruit from Persia => persica => pesca => pêche => peach) and so on.

• There are even traces of this in Italian:

  • Since mela enters in the name of melo cotogno (the quince) even though it is abbreviated to cotogno. Allowing for a certain amount of confusion this is also the probable origin of the Spanish word melocoton (a kind of peach). The origin of "cotugno" being the city of Cydonia (Κυδωνία) a town on the Northern coast of Crete, believed to have been the origin of this fruit.
  • Another Italian fruit name containing mela is the melanzana (aubergine from melo-badingian - باذنجان "badingian" is the Arabic for the eggplant/aubergine and the etymology of the word aubergine itself).
  • Yet another Italian fruit name is melograno which means pomegranate (from Latin pomum "apple" granatus "seed" or French pomme-grenade from Granada in Spain).
  • As noted in Sklivvz's comment below, the word melone itself is formed from *melo* suffixed with the standard Italian augmentative "-one".

As for the association of the apple with a good health one can also cite:

• The Spanish saying "Sano como una manzana" (healthy as an apple).

• The etymology of pomade which started as a French word for topical/ointment made from apple (pomme in French) and fat. See also the Italian pomata.

A few references for proverbs

• The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs,
• Wikipedia,
• Wikiquote,
• phrases.org.uk.

"Hey!" has been in constant use since at least the 13th century (according to OED 1 the earliest documentation is 1225, but identical expressions occur in several other Germanic languages). It's an interjection expressive of, well, practically anything you get excited about, much as it is today: "Hey, you!" "Hey! What a party!" "Hey-hey-hey!"

An 'intensive' variant, "Heyda" (also with continental cognates), is first recorded in 1526, in this eloquent cry uttered by Courtly Abusyon in Skelton's *Magnyfycence":

Huffa huffa taunderum taunderum tayne huffa huffa
[...] Rutty bully, ioly rutterkyn, heyda!

—an obvious antecedent of Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher, who sang:

hidee-hidee-hidee-hidee-hidee-hidee-hi
hodee-hodee-hodee-hodee-hodee-hodee-ho
scoodley-woo-scoodley-woo-scoodley-woodley-woodley-woo
zit-dit-dit-dit-dittle-but-dut-duttleoo-skit-dit-skittle-but-dit-zoy

By the end of the century the word is pronounced 'hayday'. It has also acquired a nominal sense: the high spirits (especially erotic high spirits) which move someone to cry "Heyda!" For instance, Hamlet reproaches his mother's unseemly sexuality thus:

You cannot call it love, for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment.

And Ford writes (1633):

Must your hot itch and pleurisy of lust
The heyday of your luxury be fed
Up to a surfeit?

Something very similar happened in the last century to the old interjection "hoppla" or "whoopee", which evolved into "making whoopee".

This nominal sense seems to have died out of colloquial use in the 18th century, to the extent that the last syllable was no longer understood and was taken to have something to do with "day"; consequently (and perhaps under the influence of Shakespeare's line) a sort of reverse folk-etymology shifted the sense of the noun to

"the stage or period when excited feeling is at its height [...] the most flourishing or exalted time" (OED)

which is the sense it bears today.