Definition of: fruit

(frt) noun
1. Bot. a The edible, pulpy mass covering the seeds of various plants and trees. They are classified as fleshy, as gourds, melons, oranges, apples, pears, berries, etc.; drupaceous, as cherries, peaches, plums, apricots, and others containing stones; dry, as nuts, capsules, achenia, follicles, legumes, etc. b In flowering plants, the mature seed vessel and its contents, together with such accessory or external parts of the inflorescence as seem to be integral with them, c In cryptogams, the spores with their enveloping or accessory organs.
2. Any vegetable product used as food, or otherwise serviceable to man, as grain, cotton, or flax; also, such products collectively: the fruits of the earth.
3. That which is produced, as the young of man or animals.
4. The consequence or result of any action; any outcome, effect, or result: the fruit of evil, the fruits of industry.
—v.t. & v.i. To bear or make bear fruit. [<OF <L fructus <frui enjoy] Synonym (noun): vegetable. In the botanical sense not only apples, pears, peaches, tomatoes, figs, etc., but all berries, nuts, grains, beans, peas, pumpkins, squashes, cucumbers, and melons, as well as pine cones, the samaras or winged seeds of the maple, ash, or elm, and many other products, are fruits. Popular usage, however, is narrower. The grains have been dropped, and the tendency is to drop nuts also, so that a fruit is now generally understood to be the fleshy and juicy product of some plant, usually tree or shrub (and nearly always containing the seed), which, when ripe, is edible without cooking, and adapted for use as a dessert as well as a salad. The quince, however, while usually cooked before eating, is classed among fruits, and we sometimes speak of poisonous fruits as the berries of the nightshade. A vegetable, in the popular sense, is any part of a herbaceous plant commonly used for culinary purposes, and may consist of the root, as in the beet and turnip; the stem, as in the asparagus, celery, and rhubarb; a tuber, or underground stem, as in the potato; the foliage, as in cabbage and spinach, or of that which is botanically the fruit, as in the tomato, bean, pea, and eggplant. See synonyms under HARVEST, PRODUCT.