fruit [ME] Fruit comes from Latin fructus ‘enjoyment of produce, harvest’ from frui ‘to enjoy’. The Latin for fruit also had the sense ‘profit, value’ which is why it is also the source of frugal [M16th] ‘economical, thrifty’. In America fruit is a term for a gay man. It could come from the US slang sense ‘a dupe, an easy victim’, with the idea of a fruit that is easily ‘picked’, or with the derogatory implication of homosexuals being ‘soft’ like fruit. Fruitcake (M20th in this case) meaning ‘a mad person’ is a play on nutty [L19th] in as nutty as a fruitcake, also mid 20th century. Fruity in the sense ‘sexually suggestive’ draws on the idea of being ‘ripe and juicy’ and dates from the early 20th century: compare the use in this sense of juicy [L19th] and spicy [M19th]. Forbidden fruit looks back to the biblical account of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which was forbidden to Adam in the Garden of Eden, and which he was disastrously tempted to eat. See also apple.