fruit up

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

fruit up (third-person singular simple present fruits up, present participle fruiting up, simple past and past participle fruited up)

1. To become full of fruit, seeds, or spores.
   • 2014, David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks, →ISBN, page 12:

     The grass and weeds come up to my waist and the plum trees are already fruiting up, though most of the fruit'll go to the wasps and the worms, Vinny says, 'cause he can't be arsed to pick it.

2. To add fruit; To adorn or embellish with fruit.
   • 1971, Francis Oswald Bennett, March of the Little Men, page 176:

     Amy spent the morning baking and this afternoon brought the result — dainty little fancies all fudged and fruited up.

   • 1998 May 12, Bruce Vilanch, “Andy Williams and me”, in The Advocate:

     Even Andy's most recent show featured the star all fruited up as Carmen Miranda for the venerable Manilow number "Copacabana."

   • 1984, Andrew Marum, Frank Parise, Follies and Foibles: A View of 20th Century Fads, page 71:

     Miranda would appear all fruited-up many times.

   • 2009, Esquire: The Magazine for Men - Volume 152, page 123:

     "All fruited up like that?" I look to Ritchie. "That's quite a gay shandy," he says. "Which most people get ridiculed for. But I figured it's good after a scrap." So I switch to lager, while Ritchie stays with the lemonade beer.

3. (idiomatic, derogatory, of a pedophile) To grope a young boy.
   • 2000, Kevin George Alderson, Beyond Coming Out: Experiences of Positive Gay Identity, →ISBN, page 36:

     I had been "fruited up." There was no distinction made back then that this man was a pedophile, and even my mother told me that this is what queer people do.

   • 2014, Eduard Fischer, Chasing the Phantom, →ISBN:

     My experience with the brothers was that if you were one of their favorites you would be regularly groped. We kids called it “being fruited up."