Other forms: grapefruits
A grapefruit is a large sharp-tasting citrus fruit. Half a grapefruit, grapefruit juice, pink grapefruit.
It interferes with a long list of medicines by blocking the enzyme that breaks them down, which can raise a dose dangerously, and pharmacists warn about it seriously. The name is thought to come from the clusters the fruit grows in.
1noungrapefruitA large sharp-tasting citrus fruit.
“She has half a grapefruit with a little sugar for breakfast.”
grapefruit is a fruit.
Grape plus fruit, apparently from the way the fruit grows in clusters like grapes.
From grape + fruit. Widely assumed to be a marketing term from grape + fruit, an allusion to the supposed grapelike clusters of fruit on the tree, early 19 Ciardi proposes another theory: one of the pomelo's botanical names is Citrus grandis, meaning “great citrus fruit”, due to the size of its fruit. A new pomelo variety might first have been called a GRAYT-froot (see greatfruit), and through the process of, the word came to be pronounced GRAYP-froot.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA