fruit

American  

[froot] / frut /

noun

• fruits,
  plural
• fruit
  plural

1. any product of plant growth useful to humans or animals.

2. the developed ovary of a seed plant with its contents and accessory parts, as the pea pod, nut, tomato, or pineapple.

3. the edible part of a plant developed from a flower, with any accessory tissues, as the peach, mulberry, or banana.

4. the spores and accessory organs of ferns, mosses, fungi, algae, or lichen.

5. anything produced or accruing; product, result, or effect; return or profit.

   the fruits of one's labors.

6. Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a contemptuous term used to refer to a gay man.

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verb (used with or without object)

• fruits,
  present (3rd person singular)
• fruited,
  past participle,  past
• fruiting
  present participle

1. to bear or cause to bear fruit.

   a tree that fruits in late summer; careful pruning that sometimes fruits a tree.

fruit British  

/ fruːt /

noun

1. botany the ripened ovary of a flowering plant, containing one or more seeds. It may be dry, as in the poppy, or fleshy, as in the peach

2. any fleshy part of a plant, other than the above structure, that supports the seeds and is edible, such as the strawberry

3. the specialized spore-producing structure of plants that do not bear seeds

4. any plant product useful to man, including grain, vegetables, etc

5. (often plural) the result or consequence of an action or effort

6. old-fashioned chap; fellow: used as a term of address

7. slang a person considered to be eccentric or insane

8. slang a male homosexual

9. archaic offspring of man or animals; progeny

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verb

1. to bear or cause to bear fruit

fruit Scientific  

/ fro̅o̅t /

1. The ripened ovary of a flowering plant that contains the seeds, sometimes fused with other parts of the plant. Fruits can be dry or fleshy. Berries, nuts, grains, pods, and drupes are fruits.

2. ◆ Fruits that consist of ripened ovaries alone, such as the tomato and pea pod, are called true fruits.

3. ◆ Fruits that consist of ripened ovaries and other parts such as the receptacle or bracts, as in the apple, are called accessory fruits or false fruits.

4. See also aggregate fruit multiple fruit simple fruit See Note at berry

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fruit Cultural  

1. In botany, the part of a seed-bearing plant that contains the fertilized seeds capable of generating a new plant (see fertilization). Fruit develops from the female part of the plant. Apples, peaches, tomatoes, and many other familiar foods are fruits.

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fruit Idioms  

1. see bear fruit; forbidden fruit.

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Usage

To most of us, a fruit is a plant part that is eaten as a dessert or snack because it is sweet, but to a botanist a fruit is a mature ovary of a plant, and as such it may or may not taste sweet. All species of flowering plants produce fruits that contain seeds. A peach, for example, contains a pit that can grow into a new peach tree, while the seeds known as peas can grow into another pea vine. To a botanist, apples, peaches, peppers, tomatoes, pea pods, cucumbers, and winged maple seeds are all fruits. A vegetable is simply part of a plant that is grown primarily for food. Thus, the leaf of spinach, the root of a carrot, the flower of broccoli, and the stalk of celery are all vegetables. In everyday, nonscientific speech we make the distinction between sweet plant parts (fruits) and nonsweet plant parts (vegetables). This is why we speak of peppers and cucumbers and squash—all fruits in the eyes of a botanist—as vegetables.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• fruitlike
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• fruit
  plural
• fruits
  plural

Participles

• fruiting
  present
• fruited
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• fruit
  simple
• fruits
  simple
• have fruited
  perfect
• has fruited
  perfect
• am fruiting
  progressive
• are fruiting
  progressive
• is fruiting
  progressive
• have been fruiting
  perfect progressive
• has been fruiting
  perfect progressive

Past

• fruited
  simple
• had fruited
  perfect
• was fruiting
  progressive
• were fruiting
  progressive
• had been fruiting
  perfect progressive

Future

• will fruit
  simple
• will have fruited
  perfect
• will be fruiting
  progressive
• will have been fruiting
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of fruit

First recorded in 1125–75; Middle English, from Old French, from Latin frūctus “enjoyment, profit, fruit,” equivalent to frūg-, variant stem of fruī “to enjoy the produce of” + -tus suffix of verbal action

Explanation

The fruit of something is what it produces, like the apples on apples trees, the grapes on grapevines, or the fruit of your labor, like the cake you baked. Fruit comes from the Latin fructus, whose root is frui, "to enjoy." The fruit of a plant, like an orange or banana, is the product of the plant that we enjoy. (You wouldn't munch on the orange tree's branch, would you?) But fruit is also the product of any work. A woven rug is the fruit of the loom, while an infant, figuratively, is called the fruit of the womb.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

fruit fruits fruited fruiting

Over the next three decades, soaring demand for the fruit transformed Michoacán state into the center of global avocado production — and catapulted a generation of people like Pancho from poverty into the middle class.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2026

At relatively low levels, including the quantities typically obtained from fruit, gut bacteria appear to be effective at removing sorbitol.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 6, 2026

For farmers, dry soils have disrupted the growth of fruit and cacao trees as well as banana and coffee plants, contributing to crop losses.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 4, 2026

Ripe fruit would fall off trees and be eaten by dogs, earning avocados the unappetising name dog fruit, he says.

From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026

“So you’re saying I just have to climb the trees and shake the fruit so it falls down, and then bring it to you?”

From Full of Beans by Jennifer L. Holm

Vietnam's Central Highlands produces around one sixth of the world's coffee, but farmers are switching their traditional crop for durian to cash in on surging Chinese demand for the pungent "king of fruits".

From Barron's ● Aug. 30, 2026

When you’re looking at a thread of social media bots sharing the same five replies to AI-generated slapfights between anthropomorphic fruits, it can be hard to remember the internet used to be a lively place.

From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2026

The U.S. manufacturing sector is enjoying the fruits of the AI boom.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026

Though the beetles snack on fruits we might also desire, they’re generally not considered pests, said Karey Windbiel-Rojas, an associate director with the University of California’s statewide integrated pest management program.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026

“This is a good market for us to sell fruits and vegetables.”

From "Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish" by Pablo Cartaya

Over the 250 years since America’s birth, there have been amber waves of great comic material, veritable fruited plains of satirical fodder.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026

The explanation for their propinquity lies not in the creation of some whiz-bang, life-changing, paradigm-bending consumer product, or the shining virtues or particularly fertile minds that grace Silicon Valley’s fruited plain.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 26, 2025

Before long, most cuisines had some sort of fruited breads or cakes that were early versions of the modern fruitcake.

From Salon ● Dec. 17, 2024

Home to Lincoln Beer Company, patrons can sip on the brewery’s “perfectly pineapple” fruited wheat pints within sight of the building’s towers, reaching nobly into the Southern California skies.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 8, 2023

"The newly decorated restaurant, Hoo's On First, the eatery of athletes, will hold its grand reopening on Sunday. Specialty of the day: fruited sea bass on purple waves."

From "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin

The orange blobs are mushroom-like "fruiting bodies" while the rest of the fungus is underground.

From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026

A fully realized edible garden, complete with raised beds and fruiting trees, enhances the property’s sense of abundance and connection to nature.”

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 25, 2026

At Taï, where chimps more often eat fruit that has fallen, the team similarly gathered undamaged and unbitten fruits from the ground below fruiting trees.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 1, 2025

To enable robots to navigate fields and harvest efficiently, many farms would need to plant fruiting walls—apple trees that have been trained to grow in dense canopies against flat vertical surfaces.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2025

A splendid stalk is raised, with a fruiting body on top, and out of this comes the next generation of amebocytes, ready to swim across the same moist ground, solitary and ambitious.

From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas

Related Words

• berry
• crop
• grain
• nut
• produce
• product