fruit

Forms

fruit m (oblique plural fruiz, fruitz; nominative singular fruiz, fruitz)^[1]

• frut, fruict, fruyt^[2][3]

The forms fruiz and fruitz are the nominative singular and oblique plural;^[1] fruict is the commonest later spelling with a learned ⟨c⟩.^[2][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin frūctus (“enjoyment; produce, fruit”),^[1][5][6][7] which in Late Latin passed from the fourth declension to the second.^[8] The Latin noun is formed on fruor (“to enjoy”) with the suffix -tus.^[9][1] The DHLF compares Germanic words such as Old English brūcan (“to use”).^[10] Its Romance cognates include Italian frutto, Old Occitan fruch and Romanian frupt (“milk foods”).^[11]

Pope traces the Old French diphthong to Late Latin /u/ followed by a glide, through Vulgar Latin *fruxtu.^[4] Old French also had the collective feminine fruite, “fruits”, from Vulgar Latin *fructa, like frutta.^[6]

The TLFi treats the word as a borrowing from classical Latin,^[12] and Bloch and Wartburg trace its abstract senses at least partly to the continued contact with written and Church Latin.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Vie de saint Léger, about 1000, where the phrase fruit esperitiel names a spiritual fruit.^{[12][14][15][16]} The TLFi traces this sense, and that of a child, to Christian Latin.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Beside the spiritual use, the sense “profit, gain drawn from something” is recorded from 1120–1150, the child as the fruit of its mother and the fruit of a plant after the flower from about 1165, in the Roman de Troie.^[12] Chrétien de Troyes uses it for crops in general, for edible fruit served as a dessert, and for a child.^[17] Bloch and Wartburg note that the word took over the sense of Latin pōmum, “fruit of a tree”.^[13] Today French fruit keeps all these senses;^[12] fruits de mer is recorded before 1798, probably after Italian.^[12]

Timeline

• 990–1010 – fruit esperitiel in the Vie de saint Léger.^[14][12]
• 1100–1125 – in the Anglo-Norman Voyage de saint Brendan.^[18][19]
• 1120–1150 – “profit, benefit”.^[12]
• c. 1165 – “offspring” and “fruit of a plant” in the Roman de Troie.^[12]
• c. 1170 – fruit eaten at a meal, in Chrétien de Troyes's Erec et Enide.^[17][20]

Meanings

Noun

1. the fruit of a plant, what follows the flower; collectively, crops and produce.^[17][3]
2. edible fruit, especially as a dessert.^[17]
3. a child, offspring, the “fruit of the womb”.^[17][3][7]
4. spiritual fruit; the result or reward of an action; profit.^[12][3]
5. (feudal, Anglo-Norman) first fruits, a payment of the first year's income of a benefice.^[3]

Anglo-Norman

The AND heads the word frut and first cites it from the first third of the 12th century.^[3] Insular French used it for crops and harvests, for spiritual fruit and for offspring, in phrases for bearing fruit, flourishing and reaping the benefits, and in law for the first fruits paid by a new holder of a benefice.^[3] Etymonline derives the English word fruit from it, first recorded in the late 12th century.^[21]

Descendants

• Champenois frut^[1]
• Gallo frut^[1]
• Middle French fruict (→ French fruit)^[1]
• Norman frit^[1]
• Picard frut^[1]
• Poitevin-Saintongeais frut^[1]
• Walloon frut^[1]
• Middle Dutch fruut (borrowed; → Dutch fruit)^[1]
• Middle English fruyt (borrowed; → English fruit, Scots fruit)^[1]

Usage notes

The DMF, Tobler–Lommatzsch and the DÉCT head the word fruit, the AND frut.^{[22][23][17][3]}

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b FROLEX 3.0, lexique morphologique du français médiéval (IXe–XVe s.), Base de français médiéval, ENS de Lyon (from the BFM, the Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam and the DMF), github.com/sheiden/Medieval-French-Language-Toolkit
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. frut
4. ^ a b Pope, Mildred K. (1934), From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman: Phonology and Morphology, Manchester: Manchester University Press (revised reprint 1952), p. § 514
5. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 3:823
6. ^ a b Gamillscheg, Ernst (1966–1969), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache, 2nd, fully revised ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 484
7. ^ a b Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1979), Dictionnaire de l'ancien français jusqu'au milieu du XIVe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris: Larousse (printing of 1988), p. s.v. fruit
8. ^ Pope, Mildred K. (1934), From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman: Phonology and Morphology, Manchester: Manchester University Press (revised reprint 1952), p. § 789
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. fructus
10. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. fruit
11. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3537
12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
13. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 319
14. ^ a b Rainsford, Thomas, CorMétAF: lemmatised extracts of Old and Middle French verse and prose (990–1500), github (texts by siglum), p. SLégerA
15. ^ Rainsford, Thomas (2025), Old Gallo-Romance Corpus, github (the earliest Gallo-Romance texts, lemmatised; texts by siglum), p. SLégerA
16. ^ UD Old French PROFITEROLE and UD Middle French PROFITEROLE treebanks, Universal Dependencies (from the SRCMF and the Base de français médiéval; texts by DEAF siglum), p. SLégerA
17. ^ a b c d e f Dictionnaire électronique de Chrétien de Troyes (DÉCT), LFA / Université d'Ottawa – ATILF, CNRS / Université de Lorraine (2014), p. s.v. fruit
18. ^ Baldinger, Kurt; Möhren, Frankwalt; Städtler, Thomas, eds. (1971–2021), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF), Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; DEAFél / DEAFpré, deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de, p. s.v. fruit
19. ^ Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. BrendanW
20. ^ Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. ErecF
21. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
22. ^ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf, p. s.v. fruit
23. ^ Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 3:2315