fruit

Etymology

From Middle English fruyt, frut (“fruits and vegetables”), from Old French fruit (“produce, fruits and vegetables”), from Latin fructus (“enjoyment, proceeds, profits, produce, income”) and frūx (“crop, produce, fruit”) (compare Latin fruor (“have the benefit of, to use, to enjoy”)), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰruHg- (“to make use of, to have enjoyment of”). Cognate with English brook (“to bear, tolerate”) and German brauchen (“to need”). Displaced native Old English wæstm.

noun

1. (often in the plural) In general, a product of plant growth useful to man or animals.
2. Specifically, a sweet and/or sour, edible part of a plant that resembles seed-bearing fruit (see next sense), even if it does not develop from a floral ovary; also used in a technically imprecise sense for some sweet or sweetish vegetables, such as the petioles of rhubarb, that resemble a true fruit or are used in cookery as if they were a fruit.
3. (botany) A product of fertilization in a plant, specifically:
   1. The seed-bearing part of a plant, often edible, colourful and fragrant, produced from a floral ovary after fertilization.
   2. The spores of cryptogams and their accessory organs.
4. 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.
   It is incontestably the case that future generations enjoyed the extraordinary fruits of the Industrial Revolution’s “great enrichment”. 2019-07-11, John Thornhill, “Does tech threaten to rerun the worst of the Industrial Revolution?”, in Financial Times
5. (attributive) Of, belonging to, related to, or having fruit or its characteristics; (of living things) producing or consuming fruit.
   fresh-squeezed fruit juice
   a fruit salad
   an artificial fruit flavor
   a fruit tree
6. (dated, colloquial, derogatory) A homosexual man; (derogatory, figurative) an effeminate man.
   I'm not talking to this twisted fruit anymore! 1984, This is Spinal Tap, spoken by Ian Faith (Tony Hendra)
   Aww, but he's so cute! / He's a fruit… Oh my fucking god! You will not believe who was here today! 1997, Daniel Clowes, “Garage Sale”, in Ghost World, Jonathan Cape, published 2000, page 15
7. (archaic) Offspring from a sexual union.
   The litter was the fruit of the union between our whippet and their terrier.
8. (informal) A crazy person.

verb

1. To produce fruit, seeds, or spores.
   It may be said, however, that the percentage of green apples among the Fameuse seedlings is much less than among the others as out of 33 Fameuse seedlings which had fruited up to this year, none was green and we recollect but one light coloured Fameuse seedling fruiting this year. 1910, Canada Experimental Farms Service, Report of the Dominion Experimental Farms
   For example, chanterelles and russulas can start fruiting in early to mid summer given sufficient moisture, but other species, such as matsutake, rarely fruit until temperatures cool in the autumn, even if moisture is available earlier. 1998, Randy Molina, David Pilz, Managing Forest Ecosystems to Conserve Fungus Diversity and Sustain Wild Mushroom Harvests, page 10
   The grass and weeds come up to my waist and the plum trees are already fruiting up, though most of the fruit'll go to the wasps and the worms, Vinny says, 'cause he can't be arsed to pick it. 2014, David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks, page 12