drupe

IPA/druːp/
KK[drˈup]IPA/druːp/

drupe — noun

  • drupesingular
  • drupesplural

1. A fruit whose single seed sits inside a hard inner shell, surrounded by soft fle

1.nounC1
Definition

A fruit whose single seed sits inside a hard inner shell, surrounded by soft flesh and covered by a thin outer peel — examples include peaches, plums, cherries, and olives.

Example

Kenji showed his class a cherry, explaining that it is a drupe with one hard stone.

drupe with — fruit named + structural feature

Ana bit into a ripe peach and pointed to the hard pit inside the drupe.

Common collocations
  • fleshy drupe
  • single-seeded drupe
  • drupe with a hard shell
  • drupe fruit
Synonyms
  • stone fruit

    Common everyday term for drupes such as peaches, plums, and cherries; less precise botanically.

Usage Note

Frequently encountered in botany textbooks and food-science writing. The everyday term 'stone fruit' is more common in casual speech.

Common Mistakes

A strawberry is a drupe.
A strawberry is not a drupe
its seeds are on the outside.' — Only fruits with a single hard central stone are drupes.

Word family

  • drupelet
    nounC2

Etymology

GreekLatinEnglish

Borrowed from Latin 'drupa', meaning an overripe olive, which itself came from Greek 'drüppa' (olive). The word entered English botanical terminology in the mid-18th century as a classification term for fruits whose seed is enclosed in a hard, stone-like layer.