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kiwi fruit

kiwi fruit

1 1.6
An oval brown fruit with fuzzy skin, green inside, and a slightly sour taste, often eaten raw or in desserts
  • noun
  • /ˈkiːwi fruːt/
translation icon : fruta kiwi
  • kiwi fruit slice
  • kiwi fruit and avocado
  • kiwi fruit peeled

Examples

  • "It's like looking at a kiwi fruit, slice by slice, compared to looking at the whole fruit," Jones says.

    Academic text (1994)
  • Also I like having avocados on hand at all time and I have some Kiwi fruit too just to snack on.

  • And this includes Kiwi fruit, prunes, figs, chia seeds and flax seeds.

  • For dessert, we made a refreshing fruit salad with slices of kiwi fruit and strawberries.

  • I enjoy eating kiwi fruit because of its sweet and tart flavor.

  • She added diced kiwi fruit to the smoothie for an extra burst of flavor.

Synonyms

kiwi
vskiwi fruit
4 1.0

A small brown fuzzy fruit with bright green flesh and tiny black seeds

stresses a slight tart taste and culinary use rather than notable sweetness
kiwifruit
vskiwi fruit
1 2.0

A small brown fruit with fuzzy skin, green flesh, and many small black seeds

focuses more on taste and eating use than on tiny physical details
Chinese gooseberry
vskiwi fruit
  • Archaic
3.5

A small fuzzy brown fruit with sour green flesh called kiwifruit

is the current common name used today rather than the historical term

How Tart

lemon
318 1.0
grapefruit
57 1.0
kiwi fruit
1 1.6
apple
583 1.0
peach
161 1.0
banana
153 1.0

Surface Forms

kiwi fruit singular
kiwi fruits plural

Morphology

kiwi + fruit

The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from the constituents: 'kiwi' names a specific kind of fuzzy brown edible item and 'fruit' marks it as an edible seed-bearing product, so 'kiwi fruit' straightforwardly denotes the fruit of the kiwi. This noun + noun type labeling is common across languages and follows an obvious compositional pattern, making it easily understood by a B1 learner who knows both words.

Etymology

The noun kiwi fruit comes from New Zealand, where growers renamed the old 'Chinese gooseberry' after the small brown bird called the kiwi because the fruit's brown, fuzzy skin looked like the bird's feathers. So today kiwi fruit simply means the small, fuzzy brown fruit we eat.