This week’s theme
Exempli gratia

This week’s words
fruiterer


Previous week’s theme
Lewis Carroll

---

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(FROO-tuhr-uhr)

MEANING:

noun: A fruit seller.

ETYMOLOGY:

From fruiter (fruit-seller) + -er (occupational suffix). From Latin fructus (enjoyment, fruit), past participle of frui (to enjoy). Earliest documented use: 1408.

NOTES:

If a fruiterer sells fruit, does a caterer sell cats? And a chatterer, French cats? And what about a wanderer or an adulterer? It’s not clear why two -er suffixes were added to fruit. If you’re in the habit of looking for logic in a language, this would be a good time to give up. Consider following John Richards’s lead as in the usage example below. It’s fruitful for one’s sanity.

The word is an example of a double agent noun. The original word fruiter meant one who sells fruit. Over time, an additional -er was attached, likely by analogy with similar-sounding occupational words that already ended in -erer, such as upholsterer.

USAGE:

“‘Something had to be done,’ [John Richards, founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society] said from his home in Boston, Lincolnshire. ‘The local fruiterer sells pounds of banana’s, the public library, of all places, had a sign saying CD’s -- even Tesco was promising 1,000’s of products.’ ...
“[He] claimed that the moment he realised he had been defeated came when he politely suggested to a restaurateur that the apostrophe in a sign advertising ‘coffee’s for sale’ should be removed. ‘I said very politely, ‘It’s not needed. It’s a plural,’ he recalled. ‘But the man said, ‘I think it looks better with an apostrophe.’ And what can you say to that?’”
John Richards Obituary; The Times (London, UK); May 10, 2021.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: