Learn English – Is using “fruits” as the plural of “fruit” acceptable

grammatical-numberuncountable-nouns

I've always understood the plural of fruit to be fruit, not fruits.

I was looking at some marketing material and they used the word "fruits" in the following context:

A unique infusion made with … strawberry, raspberry and cranberry fruits

In discussion with someone about this sentence, he described that the plural of person is not necessarily always people, and could be persons. Therefore it's possible that fruits could be a legitimate plural form.

Is fruits used correctly in this context, or could it be used correctly in ANY context?

Best Answer

Your example sentence is fine. The plural of fruit is fruits. You are confused over the matter of countable and uncountable nouns.

This is tricky to explain, because there are few strict rules about which nouns are countable and uncountable, so I will hope you will forgive this over-simplified account:

  • Some nouns (e.g. chair) are countable. We can say "one chair", "two chairs", etc. They have singular and plural forms.
  • Other nouns are uncountable. We do not say "one fun" "two funs". There is no plural form of fun.
  • Many nouns have both countable and uncountable senses. E.g. you can have a bar of chocolate [uncountable], or a box of chocolates [countable, plural].
  • Nouns for classes of foodstuff (fruit, meat, cheese, etc.) are usually uncountable, but they take a countable sense when we talk about different varieties (a wide selection of cold meats and cheeses).

Your example sentence talks about different varieties of fruit, so fruits is fine.

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