Meaning & use
pineapple
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Meanings
nouncountable or uncountable
A large tropical fruit with a rough, spiky brown skin and sweet yellow flesh inside.
Grammar: Countable when talking about a whole fruit: a pineapple. Uncountable when talking about the food: some pineapple.
Patterns
- a pineapple
- some pineapple
- pineapple juice
She cut up a fresh pineapple for the fruit salad.
We drank pineapple juice with our breakfast.
Pineapples grow in warm countries like Costa Rica and the Philippines.
nouncountable
The plant that produces this fruit, with long spiky leaves.
Grammar: Refers to the plant itself, not the fruit. Use 'a pineapple' or 'pineapples'.
Patterns
- a pineapple plant
- grow pineapples
The pineapple is a member of the bromeliad family.
They grow pineapples in their garden in Hawaii.
Word forms
| plural | pineapples |
|---|
Common combinations
- pineapple juice
- I like to drink pineapple juice in the morning.
- fresh pineapple
- The market sells fresh pineapple all year round.
- pineapple chunks
- Add pineapple chunks to the cake mixture.
- canned pineapple
- She used canned pineapple because it was cheaper.
Synonyms and how they differ
- ananas
- A less common word for pineapple, used in some languages and in scientific contexts; in everyday English, 'pineapple' is the normal term.
Word family
- pineapple noun
- The fruit or plant itself; no common derived forms exist.
Commonly confused: pineapple or pine?
pineapple vs pine
A pine is a type of evergreen tree, not a fruit. The word 'pineapple' comes from the fruit's resemblance to a pine cone.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'pineapple' correctly?
Choose one answer.
Option 0 is correct because 'pineapple' is a countable noun and can be the object of 'ate'. The other options use 'pineapple' in grammatically incorrect ways: 'of bread' is wrong because pineapple is not a quantity, 'to the store' is a prepositional phrase that doesn't fit, and 'very quickly' is an adverb that cannot directly follow 'ate a pineapple' in this context (though it could modify the verb, the phrase 'ate a pineapple very quickly' is actually grammatical, so option 3 is also possible; however, option 0 is the most straightforward and natural).
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “pineapple”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.