A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's Storehouse of Human Knowledge
Why is that thing below your jawline called an Adam's apple?
November 10, 1989
Dear Cecil:
Why do they call that thing below your jawline an Adam's apple? Relative of yours?
Cecil replies:
You heathens, the Adam in question is everybody's relative, the ancestor of humankind. It's called an Adam's apple because of a legend that a piece of the forbidden fruit got stuck in his throat. Eve, alas, didn't know the Heimlich maneuver, and the resultant bulge has been passed down to subsequent generations as a sign of male weakness — as if we needed reminding. In reality the Adam's apple is "the anterior extremity of the thyroid cartilage of the larynx."
