fruit
UK /fɹuːt/ · US /fɹut/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms fruits fruiting fruited
- noun (botany) A product of fertilization in a plant, specifically:
- noun The seed-bearing part of a plant; often edible, colourful, fragrant, and sweet or sour; produced from a floral ovary after fertilization.
- noun The spores of cryptogams and their accessory organs.
- noun Any sweet or sour, edible part of a plant that resembles seed-bearing fruit (see former sense) even if it does not develop from a floral ovary.
- noun A sweet or sweetish vegetable, such as the petioles of rhubarb, that resembles a true fruit or is used in cookery as if it was a fruit.
- noun An end result, effect, or consequence; advantageous or disadvantageous result. “His long nights in the office eventually bore fruit when his business boomed and he was given a raise.”
- noun (attributive) Of, belonging to, related to, or having fruit or its characteristics; (of living things) producing or consuming fruit. “fresh-squeezed fruit juice”
- noun (dated, colloquial, derogatory) A homosexual man, especially an effeminate one.
- verb (intransitive) To produce fruit, seeds, or spores.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
batty boy batty man botter bumboy bum chum bumder bummer butt rider chi chi man confirmed bachelor cock gobbler dicklicker dung puncher finocchio finook friend of Dorothy funny boy gay gayboy gaylord yield
Etymology
From Middle English fruyt, frut (“fruits and vegetables”), from Old French fruit (“produce, fruits and vegetables”), from Latin fruitus (“enjoyment, proceeds, profits, produce, income”), frūctus and frūx (“crop, produce, fruit”) (compare Latin fruor (“have the benefit of, to use, to enjoy”)).
Cognate with English brook (“to bear, tolerate”) and German brauchen (“to need”). Partially displaced native Old English wæstm, ofett and æppel (whence modern ovest and apple).
Compare Dutch vrucht, German Frucht, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish frukt, Danish frugt.
In the derogatory senses of “crazy person” and “homosexual or effeminate man”, possibly a shortening of fruitcake, or of independent origin, compare Fruit (slang).
* As a German surname, Americanized from Fruth, and also Frucht.
* As a French and West Flemish surname, from the noun fruit. Sometimes also shortened from the personal name Godefrait, a French form of Godfrey.
Webster’s 1913
- noun Whatever is produced for the nourishment or enjoyment of man or animals by the processes of vegetable growth, as corn, grass, cotton, flax, etc.; --commonly used in the plural.
- noun The pulpy, edible seed vessels of certain plants, especially those grown on branches above ground, as apples, oranges, grapes, melons, berries, etc. See 3.
- verb To bear fruit. Chesterfield.
Etymology [OE. fruit, frut, F. fruit, from L. fructus enjoyment, product, fruit, from frui, p. p. fructus, to enjoy; akin to E. brook, v. t. See Broook, v. t., and cf. Fructify, Frugal.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “fruit”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details