Related questions:
- What does "lemon on" mean in this context?
- What is the origin of the phrase "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade"?
In the above questions, "lemon" is used to mean a faulty or defective item. A typical use might be to describe a second hand car that, once bought, turns out to have serious faults, as a "lemon".
Why is the delicious fruit associated with faulty goods?
- perhaps via criminal slang sense of "a person who is a loser, a simpleton," which is perhaps from the notion of someone a sharper can "suck the juice out of."
- A pool hall hustle was called a lemon game (1908);
- while to hand someone a lemon was British slang (1906) for "to pass off a sub-standard article as a good one."
- Or it simply may be a metaphor for something which "leaves a bad taste in one's mouth."
But none of these rings true for me, and words like "may be" and "perhaps" show a lack of confidence. Can anyone shed more light?
Best Answer
Evan Morris over at The Word Detective, answering a similar query, has some helpful musings.
He argues that despite all the good lemons have done, they've suffered from an image problem since the dawn of their cultivation—due primarily to their stinging acidity and tough skins.
He continues,
And, clearly drawing from some of the OED citations mentioned by @Barrie, he concludes,
Also of note, I found occasional use of the phrase (at least as early as 1918), "to give someone a lemon and pass it off as a nugget (of gold)." If this was the original saying, later shortened to "handing someone a lemon," then the implication of trickery is confirmed and the metaphorical use of lemon further explained.