Meaning & use
soft fruits
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“soft fruits” is a form of “soft fruit”. See that entry for the full set of meanings.
Meaning
nounpluralBritish
Small, juicy fruits with no hard stone or thick skin, such as strawberries, raspberries and currants, that bruise easily.
Grammar: Plural form; the same idea can be uncountable as soft fruit: soft fruit is expensive in winter.
Patterns
- grow soft fruits
- a punnet of soft fruits
The allotment is full of soft fruits by midsummer.
Soft fruits like raspberries should be eaten within a day or two of picking.
She made a jam from mixed soft fruits left over from the market.
Word forms
| singular | soft fruit |
|---|
Common combinations
- pick soft fruits
- We spent the morning picking soft fruits at a local farm.
- freeze soft fruits
- You can freeze soft fruits on a tray before bagging them.
- summer soft fruits
- Summer soft fruits are the star of the dessert menu.
- grow soft fruits
- They grow soft fruits under netting to keep the birds off.
- a soft fruit cage
- A soft fruit cage protects the crop from pigeons.
Synonyms and how they differ
- berries
- Berries is the everyday American word and covers most of the same fruits, but soft fruits also includes things like currants and sometimes cherries.
- summer fruits
- Summer fruits is a shopping label that groups the same fruits by season, not by texture.
- bush fruits
- Bush fruits is a gardening term that only covers those growing on bushes, such as gooseberries, leaving out strawberries.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: soft fruits or stone fruits?
soft fruits vs stone fruits
Stone fruits such as plums and peaches have a hard pit and are not usually called soft fruits.
Practice
Which of these would a British gardener most likely call a soft fruit?
Choose one answer.
A raspberry is small, juicy and bruises easily. Apples are top fruit, and walnuts and coconuts are hard-shelled nuts or seeds.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “soft fruits”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.