Meaning & use
fruitful
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Meanings
adjectivecomparable
Producing good results or useful outcomes, so that the time and effort were worthwhile.
Grammar: Can come before a noun or after be: a fruitful meeting, the meeting was fruitful.
Patterns
- fruitful discussion
- fruitful partnership
- prove fruitful
We had a fruitful discussion about next year's budget.
Their partnership proved fruitful for both companies.
It was a fruitful afternoon in the lab.
adjectivecomparableliterary
Bearing plenty of fruit or crops, as a tree, plant or piece of land does.
Grammar: Literal and somewhat formal or literary: a fruitful orchard.
Patterns
- fruitful soil
- fruitful harvest
The river valley was fruitful and green.
The old apple tree was fruitful again this autumn.
A fruitful season filled the barns.
Word forms
| comparative | more fruitful |
|---|---|
| superlative | most fruitful |
Common combinations
- fruitful discussion
- The two leaders had a fruitful discussion.
- fruitful collaboration
- Their fruitful collaboration lasted twenty years.
- prove fruitful
- The search finally proved fruitful.
- fruitful career
- She enjoyed a long and fruitful career in teaching.
- fruitful area
- Language learning is a fruitful area of research.
Synonyms and how they differ
- productive
- Productive stresses the amount achieved, while fruitful stresses that the outcome was worthwhile.
- rewarding
- Rewarding focuses on the satisfaction felt by the person, not on measurable results.
- profitable
- Profitable usually means making money, whereas fruitful can describe any good result.
- successful
- Successful only says that a goal was reached and does not carry the idea of yielding something new.
Opposites
Word family
- fruit noun
- the edible part of a plant, or a result
- fruitfully adverb
- in a way that gives good results
- fruitfulness noun
- the quality of being fruitful
- fruitless adjective
- producing no result
Commonly confused: fruitful or fruity?
fruitful vs fruity
Fruity describes the taste or smell of fruit, but fruitful means producing good results.
Practice
The long search finally proved ______ when they found the missing documents.
Choose one answer.
Proved fruitful means it produced a good result. Fruitless is the opposite and would not make sense after finding the documents.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “fruitful”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.