How do you like them apples

"How do you like them apples?", also shortened to, "How do you like them?" or, "Them apples," is an American idiom used to gloat or to express bemusement.. In both senses, the phrase probably acts as a rhetorical question. The origin of this idiom is uncertain.

In Film

The phrase got wide exposure in the popular 1997 Hollywood film, Good Will Hunting. Will, the film's main character, gloats to a rival, Clark, AbOUT winning a young woman's affection:

• Will: Do you like apples?
• Clark: Yeah.
• Will: Well, I got her number. How do you like them apples?

The phrase also occurs in the 1959 Hollywood Western film Rio Bravo. After the character Chance sharp-shoots a stick of dynamite, the character Stumpy exclaims, "Dude, how do you like them apples?"

Another example is Chinatown from 1974, where Jack Nicholson utters the phrase after a surprising telephone call.

The phrase also appears in the 1996 movie From Dusk Till Dawn, uttered by George Clooney's character after successful passing through the Mexican border.

A version of the phrase also May Be linked with the Apple Orchard scene in the Wizard of Oz. The Scarecrow says "I'll show you how to get apples" to Dorothy.

Theories of Origin

One theory as to its origin suggests that it originated in World War I with the "toffee apple," a kind of trench mortar bomb sometimes used to destroy tanks. So "How do you like them apples?" most probably was said gloatingly (as the term is now used) after an "apple" took out an enemy.