fruto

Forms

fruto m (plural frutos)^[1] Berceo uses the popular Old Spanish form frucho beside the Latinising spellings fructo, fructu and fruto.^[2] The spelling fructo was still current in the 16th century;^[3] Autoridades notes that some wrote it so, after the Latin, but that usage had dropped the ⟨c⟩.^[4][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish fruto, inherited from Latin frūctus (“enjoyment, usufruct; produce, fruit”), in a semi-learned form.^[2][5][6] Wiktionary treats it as a learned borrowing and sets it against the inherited Old Spanish frucho.^[1] Corominas notes that Berceo knows the popular form, and reports Américo Castro's view that the semi-learned form was that of the clergy, who received the fruits of the land as tithes, and that it won out over the form of the farmers who paid them.^[2] The stem of the popular form lived on for some time in derivatives.^[2]

The other Romance languages have fully inherited forms: French fruit, Occitan fruit, Catalan fruit, Old Galician-Portuguese fruito, Galician froito and Italian frutto; modern Portuguese fruto matches the Spanish word.^[2][7] Romanian frupt has narrowed to “milk foods”.^[7]

The Latin noun is formed from fruor (“to enjoy”) with the suffix of action nouns -tus.^[8][1] De Vaan traces the verb to Proto-Indo-European *bʰruHg- (“to use”), the root of brūcan and brūhhan “to use”; frūx (“crop, fruit”) and frūmentum (“grain”) belong to the same family.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Glosas Silenses, of the second half of the 10th century, have the form fruitu;^[10] fruto itself appears in a document of 1192 (dated with a query) and in the Fuero de Guadalajara of 1219.^[2] The CDH's earliest hit not known from a later copy, from the Cortes de Benavente of 1202, has the plural in the sense “yield of an estate”: los frutos de toda la heredad haya el Rey cada año “let the king have the fruits of the whole estate every year”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word covered both the fruit of a tree and the produce or yield of land, and Alfonso X's prose also uses it for any product and for the result of an action.^[12] Covarrubias in 1611 derives it from Latin fruor and records hacer fruto “to do good, be of use”.^[10] Autoridades defines it as what a tree or plant yields each year after the flower and leaf, by extension anything useful the earth produces, and figuratively profit.^[4] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 adds the phrase fruto de bendición “child of a lawful marriage”.^[13]

In 1855 Baralt objected to fruto for “product of the mind” and “result” as not genuinely Spanish, since the authorised dictionaries gave only “profit, advantage”.^[14] The Academy accepted the products of human wit and work in 1869, and in 1899 replaced its definition with a botanical one, the product of the fertilisation of plants that holds the seeds.^[15][16] Medieval Latin had already used the Latin word for “offspring”, the sense behind the modern “child”.^[17][6]

The collective fruta, from the Late Latin neuter plural fructa, is attested from the early 13th century and took over the edible fruits, so that fruto is now the botanical and figurative word.^[2][5] In the Caribbean and Venezuela frutos menores are small-scale crops such as maize and beans.^[18]

Timeline

• 950–1000 – the Glosas Silenses have the form fruitu.^[2][5]
• 1202 – the Cortes de Benavente speak of the frutos of an estate.^[11]
• 1219 – fruto in the Fuero de Guadalajara.^[2]
• c. 1230–1250 – Berceo uses the popular form frucho beside fructo and fruto.^[2]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses fructo for the fruit of a tree and for the produce of the land.^[12]
• 1528 – the first records from the Americas, in Nicaragua and the Darién.^[3]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records hacer fruto “to be of use”.^[10]
• 1817 – the Academy's dictionary gives fruto de bendición.^[13]
• 1899 – the Academy defines the word botanically for the first time.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (botany) fruit: the organ that develops from the ovary of a flower after fertilisation and holds the seeds.^[6][1]
2. The produce of a plant, useful or not, that develops and protects the seed.^[6]
3. (figurative) A child, especially in relation to its mother or to a marriage.^[6][1]
4. A product of the mind or of human work: La novela es fruto de diez años de trabajo.^[6][19]
5. A result or profit obtained from something.^[6][1]
6. (in the plural) The crops of the land.^[6]

Word family

• fruta
• frutal
• frutar
• frutero
• frutería
• frutilla

Related words

• disfrutar
• fructificar
• fructuoso
• infructuoso
• fructífero
• fruición
• frugal
• Latin frūctus
• Portuguese fruto

Usage notes

Set phrases include dar fruto “to bear fruit”, fruto prohibido “forbidden fruit” and frutos secos “nuts and dried fruit”.^[6][19][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 967
3. ^ a b c Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. fructo
4. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3
5. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fruto
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. fruto
7. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. frūctus
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 867
11. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. fruto
12. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. fruto
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 428
14. ^ Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 317
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 371
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 474
17. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
18. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. fruto
19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fruto