Other forms: fruits
A fruit is the sweet part of a plant that holds its seeds. Fresh fruit, a piece of fruit, fruit and vegetables.
Botanically a fruit is the seed-bearing structure, which makes tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and beans fruits — and rhubarb a vegetable. The everyday division is by sweetness and by what you do with it, and it is the one the shops use. Note bear fruit, meaning to produce results; the fruits of your labour; and forbidden fruit.
1nounfruitThe sweet seed-bearing part of a plant, eaten as food.
“Try to eat more fruit, like apples, bananas and oranges.”
2nounresultThe result of effort.
“The new hospital is the fruit of years of hard work.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
fruit is a plant part, or a result.
Latin fructus means enjoyment or produce, from frui, to enjoy. Fruition, frugal and enjoy come from the same enjoyment.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰrewHg-
Middle English
fruyt
English, today
fruit
Built from
From Middle English fruyt. 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 wæstm, ofett and æppel (whence modern ovest and apple).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA