Other forms: pruning, prunes, pruned
A prune is a dried plum, best known for helping digestion. A box of prunes, prunes and custard, prune juice.
The reputation is deserved: prunes contain both fibre and sorbitol, and they work. The dried-fruit industry has spent decades trying to rename them dried plums for exactly that reason. Prune is also a completely separate verb meaning to cut back a plant — prune the roses — and by extension to cut anything down: prune the budget. Note pruning shears, and that the two words come from different sources entirely.
The fruit comes from Latin prunum, a plum, through Greek. The verb comes from an unrelated Old French word about cutting back vines, so the dried plum and the secateurs have nothing in common but spelling.
Ancient Greek
προῦνον
Latin
prūnum
Vulgar Latin
*prūna
Old French
prune
Middle English
prune
English, today
prune
Built from
From Middle English prune, from Old French prune, from Vulgar Latin prūna, feminine singular formed from the neutral plural of Latin prūnum, from Ancient Greek προῦνον, variant of προῦμνον (“plum”), a loanword from a language of Asia Minor. a doublet of plum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Food & Drink, Trees & Flowers