Fruitful

How to spell fruitful

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fruitful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fruitful mean?

1. adjectiveProducing good, useful or plentiful results.

Fruitful in a sentence

• The two companies enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership.

• The meeting was fruitful, and we left with a clear plan of action.

Where does fruitful come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The first part of this word comes from the Latin fructus, meaning 'produce', 'profit' or 'enjoyment', which was itself formed from the verb frui, 'to use or enjoy'. English took 'fruit' from Old French during the 1100s and 1200s, originally as a broad term for any produce of the soil before it narrowed to the sweet, seed-bearing growth of plants we mean today. To this borrowed root English then attached its own native suffix -ful, meaning 'full of' or 'abounding in', a building block from Old English that still ends words like 'careful' and 'useful'. The combination 'fruitful' therefore literally meant 'full of fruit', and by the time it settled into English it had already broadened to describe anything that produces good or plentiful results. The spelling trap lives entirely in that suffix: although the standalone word 'full' carries two letter l's, the suffix -ful is always written with a single l, so 'fruitful' must never gain a second one.

How the word is built

• fruit (from Latin fructus: produce, yield)
• -ful (full of, characterised by)