Fruit (slang)

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Number of slang terms

title: "Fruit (slang)" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["english-words", "homophobic-slurs", "lgbtq-slang", "lgbtq-related-slurs"] description: "Number of slang terms" topic_path: "general/english-words" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_(slang)" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Number of slang terms ::

Fruit, fruity, and fruitcake, as well as its many variations, are slang or even sexual slang terms which have various origins. These terms have often been used derogatorily to refer to LGBTQ people.{{cite book |last=Minton |first=Henry L. |title=Gay and Lesbian Studies |publisher=Haworth Press |date=1992 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=TFFYThpQQPwC&q=fruit+homosexuality+term |access-date=2007-11-15 |isbn=978-1-56024-307-6 }}{{cite book |last=Savin-Williams |first=Ritch C. |title=And Then I Became Gay: Young Men's Stories |publisher=Routledge |date=1998 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=PMiM6oYasgEC&q=fruit+homosexuality+term |access-date=2007-11-15 |isbn=978-0-415-91676-9 }} Usually used as pejoratives, the terms have also been re-appropriated as insider terms of endearment within LGBTQ communities.{{cite book |last=Goodwin |first=Joseph P. |title=More Man Than You'll Ever Be: Gay Folklore and Acculturation in Middle America |publisher=Indiana University Press |date=1989 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=hafi17WHyzAC&q=fruit+homosexuality+term&pg=PR9 |access-date=2007-11-15 |isbn=978-0-253-20497-4 }} Many modern pop culture references within the gay nightlife like "Fruit Machine" and "Fruit Packers" have been appropriated for reclaiming usage, similar to queer.

Origin and historical usage

In A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address author Leslie Dunkling traces the friendly use of the phrase old fruit (and rarely old tin of fruit) to the 1920s in Britain, possibly deriving from the phrase fruit of the womb. In the United States, however, both fruit and fruitcake are seen as negative, with fruitcake likely originating from the idiom nutty as a fruitcake .

Costermongers and Cockney rhyming slang

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/1899_Gus_Ellen.jpg" caption="''The Coster's Mansion'', 1899 sheet music"] ::

A costermonger was a street seller of fruit and vegetables. The term, which derived from the words costard (a type of apple) and monger, i.e. "seller", came to be particularly associated with the "barrow boys" of London who would sell their produce from a wheelbarrow or wheeled market stall. Costermongers have existed in London since at least the 16th century, when they were mentioned by Shakespeare and Marlowe, and were probably most numerous during the Victorian era, when there were said to be over 30,000 in 1860. They gained a fairly unsavoury reputation for their "low habits, general improvidence, love of gambling, total want of education, disregard for lawful marriage ceremonies, and their use of a peculiar slang language".{{cite book |last=Hotten |first=John Camden |title=The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal |publisher=Cockney Rhyming Slang |date=1859|page=130 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=l3MKAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+Slang+Dictionary%22+%22John+Camden+Hotten%22&pg=PA380 |access-date=2007-11-16}} Two examples of their slang are referring to potatoes as "bog-oranges" likely developed from the phrase "Irish fruit" also referring to potatoes{{cite book |last=Hotten |first=John Camden |title=The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal |publisher=Cockney Rhyming Slang |date=1859|page=90 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=l3MKAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+Slang+Dictionary%22+%22John+Camden+Hotten%22&pg=PA380 |access-date=2007-11-16}} and "cool the delo nammow" which means 'watch out for that old woman' with the words essentially backwards; cool (look), delo (old) and nammow (woman).{{cite book |last=Hotten |first=John Camden |title=The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal |publisher=Cockney Rhyming Slang |date=1859|page=353 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=l3MKAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+Slang+Dictionary%22+%22John+Camden+Hotten%22&pg=PA380 |access-date=2007-11-16}}

Out of the East End of London traditional Cockney rhyming slang developed, which works by taking two words that are related through a short phrase and using the first word to stand for a word that rhymes with the second. For instance, the most popular of these rhyming slang phrases used throughout Britain is probably "telling porkies" meaning "lies" as "pork pies" rhymes with lies. "Alright, me old fruit?" is an example of this as "fruit gum" is translated as meaning "chum" (a friend or acquaintance).{{cite web |last=Smith |first=Gordon |title=Slang to English letter F |publisher=Cockney Rhyming Slang |date=1998–2006 |url = http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/slang/F |access-date=2007-11-16}}

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang traces uses of fruit meaning an easy victim in the late 19th century and also as an eccentric person (along with fruitball, fruit basket and fruit merchant).{{cite book |last=Green |first=Jonathon |title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang |publisher=Sterling Publishing |date=2006|page=549 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&q=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&pg=PA440 |access-date=2007-11-16 |isbn=978-0-304-36636-1}}

As gay slang

Fruit as gay slang or slur is amongst the lexicon of the cant slang Polari used in the gay subculture in Britain, which has become more mainstream with transcontinental travel and online communication.{{cite news |last=D'Silva |first=Beverley |title=Mind Your Language |publisher=The Observer (UK) |date=December 10, 2000 |url = https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2000/dec/10/life1.lifemagazine3 |access-date=2007-11-14 | location=London}} There is still debate about how Polari originated but its origins can be traced back to at least the 19th century{{cite news |last=Gill |first=Liz |title=Lavender Linguistics |publisher=The Guardian (UK) |date=July 14, 2003 |url = https://www.theguardian.com/gayrights/story/0,12592,997623,00.html |access-date=2007-11-14 | location=London}} and has multiple origins and routes of dissemination with researchers finding a relatively small base of less than two dozen common (universal words) supplemented by regional phrases. It is believed to be passed on near exclusively by oral history and teaching and was found in traveling professions such as those in the sailing and traveling entertainment industries (like minstrel shows and circuses). In Polari, fruit means queen, which at the time and still today is a term for gay men and can be used positively or negatively depending on the speaker, usage and intent.{{cite journal |last=Gaudio |first=Rudolf P. |title=Sounding Gay: Pitch Properties in the Speech of Gay and Straight Men |publisher=Duke University Press |date=Spring 1994|journal=Journal of American Speech|volume=69|number=1|pages=30–57 |jstor = 455948 |doi=10.2307/455948}}{{cite web |last=Runner |first=Jeffrey T. |title=In Search of Gay Language |publisher=University of Rochester |year=2004 |url = http://66.102.1.104/scholar?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=cache:LCBvI3zpEAkJ:urresearch.rochester.edu/retrieve/3177/RunnerSBA2004.pdf+fruit+homosexuality+term|format=PDF |access-date=2007-11-15}}

Several origins of the word fruit being used to describe gay men are possible, and most stem from the linguistic concepts of insulting a man by comparing him to or calling him a woman. In Edita Jodonytë and Palmina Morkienë's research On Sexist Attitudes in English they note "female-associated words become totally derogatory when applied to males"{{cite web |last=Jodonytë |first=Edita |author2=Palmina Morkienë |title=On Sexist Attitudes in English |publisher=Informacinių technologijų plėtros institutas |url = http://www.kalbos.lt/txt/1/jod_2.htm |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20050323094459/http://www.kalbos.lt/txt/1/jod_2.htm |archive-date = 2005-03-23 |access-date=2009-11-23}} and “[W]hen language oppresses it does so by any means that disparage and belittle.” Comparing a gay man to fruit, soft and tender, effeminate, like a woman has possibly gained near universal use because both LGBTQ people and fruit are found nearly everywhere.{{cite journal |last=Fraser |first=Bruce |title=Insulting Problems in a Second Language |publisher=Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) |journal=TESOL Quarterly|volume=15|number=4|date=December 1981|pages=435–441 |jstor = 3586484 |doi=10.2307/3586484 |last=Jackson |first=Paul |title=One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military During World War II |publisher=McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP |year=2004 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=SHGRxuaJ0F4C&q=fruit+gay+subculture&pg=PA194 |access-date=2007-11-16 |isbn=978-0-7735-2772-0}}

From the 1857 "Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer In Use, Or Are Not Used In The Same Sense. And Words Which Are Now Used Only In The Provincial Dialects" (e.g. all parts of England other than London) several routes seem likely, cockney was "an effeminate boy who sold fruit and greens{{cite book |last=Wright |first=Thomas |title=Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer In Use, Or Are Not Used In The Same Sense. And Words Which Are Now Used Only In The Provincial Dialects |publisher=Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) |date=1857|page=326 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=-cQRAAAAIAAJ&q=fruit+effeminate |access-date=2007-11-15}} while cobble is the stone (or pit) of a fruit which also is presently defined as male testicles{{cite book |last=Wright |first=Thomas |title=Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer In Use, Or Are Not Used In The Same Sense. And Words Which Are Now Used Only In The Provincial Dialects |publisher=Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) |date=1857|page=324 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=-cQRAAAAIAAJ&q=fruit+effeminate |access-date=2007-11-15}}{{cite book |last=Green |first=Jonathon |title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang |publisher=Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. |date=2006|page=305 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=5GpLcC4a5fAC&q=cobbles+testicles&pg=PA305 |access-date=2007-11-16 |isbn=978-0-304-36636-1 }} from the Cockney rhyming slang "cobbler's awls", meaning "balls" and blow was the blossoming of a fruit tree and is widely used as the Polari definition for oral sex on a man causing him to "blow" (ejaculate).{{cite book |last=Wright |first=Thomas |title=Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer In Use, Or Are Not Used In The Same Sense. And Words Which Are Now Used Only In The Provincial Dialects |publisher=Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) |date=1857|page=226 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=-cQRAAAAIAAJ&q=fruit+effeminate |access-date=2007-11-15}}

Fruitcake

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Traditional_fruitcake.jpg" caption="nuts]]."] ::

Fruitcakes, which are cakes containing both fruit and nuts, have been in existence since the Middle Ages, but it is unclear when the term started being used disparagingly, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a slur for a 'crazy person' (e.g., "he's a complete fruitcake") although Cassell's Dictionary of Slang traces uses of fruitcake meaning an eccentric (crazy) person to 1910s. It is derived from the expression "nutty as a fruitcake", which was first recorded in 1935. A nut can be either a seed or a fruit.

By the 1930s both fruit and fruitcake terms are seen as not only negative but also to mean male homosexual,{{cite book |last=Dunkling |first=Leslie |author-link=Leslie Dunkling |title=A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address |publisher=Routledge |date=1990 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=5QIv39cbUMYC&q=fruit+homosexuality+term |access-date=2007-11-15 |isbn=978-0-415-00761-0 }} although probably not universally. LGBTQ people were widely diagnosed as diseased with the potential for being cured, thus were regularly "treated" with castration,{{cite journal |last=Talbot |first=E.S. |author2=Ellis, Havelock |year=1896 |title=A Case of Developmental Degenerative Insanity, with Sexual Inversion, Melancholia, Following Removal of Testicles, Attempted Murder and Suicide |journal=Journal of Mental Science |volume=42 |issue=177 |pages=341–44 |doi=10.1192/bjp.42.177.340 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/2133297 |year=1929 |title=Results of Castration in Sexual Abnormalities |journal=Urologic & Cutaneous Review |volume=33 |pages=351 |last=Kronemeyer |first=Robert |title=Overcoming Homosexuality |year=1980 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=0-02-566850-1 |pages=81, 87 |quote=In the 1950s and 1960s, lobotomies ... were administered promiscuously in the treatment of homosexuals. |last=Friedlander |first=Joseph |author2=Banay, Ralph S. |year=1948 |title=Psychosis Following Lobotomy in a Case of Sexual Psychopathology; Report of a Case |journal=Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry |volume=59 |issue=3 |pages=303–11, 315, 321 |doi=10.1001/archneurpsyc.1948.02300380031003 |pmid=18874263 |year=1904 |title=The Gentleman Degenerate. A Homosexualist's Self-Description and Self-Applied Title. Pudic Nerve Section Fails Therapeutically |journal=Alienist & Neurologist |volume=25 |pages=68–70 |last=Max |first=Louis William |year=1935 |title=Breaking Up a Homosexual Fixation by the Condition Reaction Technique: A Case Study |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_psychological-bulletin_1935-11_32_9/page/734 |journal=Psychological Bulletin |volume=32 |pages=734 |doi=10.1037/h0052493 |last=Liebman |first=Samuel |year=1967 |title=Homosexuality, Transvestism, and Psychosis: Study of a Case Treated with Electroshock |journal=Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease |volume=99 |pages=945–57 |doi=10.1097/00005053-194406000-00008 |s2cid=147139681

From 1942 to 1947, conscientious objectors in the US assigned to psychiatric hospitals under Civilian Public Service exposed abuses throughout the psychiatric care system and were instrumental in reforms of the 1940s and 1950s.

Usages

''Strange Fruit''

"Strange Fruit" is most often a reference to the lynchings of black people in the American South, in reference to the jazz song of that name popularised by Billie Holiday. Fruit of the gibbet (used 18th through late 19th centuries) refers to a hanged man{{cite book |last=Green |first=Jonathon |title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang |publisher=Sterling Publishing |date=2006|page=548 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&q=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&pg=PA440 |access-date=2007-11-16 |isbn=978-0-304-36636-1}} and derives from the Halifax Gibbet Law under which a prisoner was executed first and his guilt or innocence determined afterwards.{{cite book |last=Green |first=Jonathon |title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang |publisher=Sterling Publishing |date=2006|page=634 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&q=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&pg=PA440 |access-date=2007-11-16 |isbn=978-0-304-36636-1}}{{cite book |last=Carter |first=Albert Thomas |title=A History of English Legal Institutions |publisher=Butterworth |year=1906 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=1QQzAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Halifax+Gibbet+Law%22&pg=PA288 |access-date=2007-11-16}}

"Strange Fruit" as a song and concept has been used in LGBTQ art including a 1944 lesbian novel,{{cite book |last=Jones |first=Sonya L. |title=Gay and Lesbian Literature Since World War II: History and Memory |publisher=Haworth Press |date=1979|volume=02 |issue=4 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=7rFOUk9lT4gC&q=fruit+homosexuality+term+reclaim&pg=PA1 |access-date=2007-11-15 |isbn=978-0-7890-0349-2}} Kyle Schickner's 2004 video,{{cite web |last = Sumter-Freitag |first = April |title = Strange Fruit |publisher = Vancouver Queer Film + Video Festival |year = 2005 |url = http://www.outonscreen.com/festival/2005/viewshowtime.php?stid=37 |access-date = 2007-11-15 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080109214615/http://www.outonscreen.com/festival/2005/viewshowtime.php?stid=37 |archive-date = 2008-01-09 |title = Strange Fruit |publisher = Northwestern University |year = 2007 |url = http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/performancestudies/faculty/E_Patrick_Johnson/fruit/ |access-date = 2007-11-15 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060911105043/https://www.communication.northwestern.edu/performancestudies/faculty/E_Patrick_Johnson/fruit/ |archive-date = 2006-09-11 |last=Dixon |first=Poppy |title=Strange Fruit: Comparing the Struggles of African-Americans for Civil Rights with the Struggles of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Peoples |publisher=Whosoever |year=2001 |url = http://whosoever.org/v6i1/fruit.html |access-date=2007-11-15}}

"Fruta Extraña," Spanish for "Strange Fruit", is a Spanish and English gay-themed talk show on BronxNet, Bronx public access television. Eric Stephen Booth directed the show as well as one of the longest-running programs on Bronx public access television. "Strange Fruits," which the New York Times describes as "a 30-minute burst of gender-bending camp and low-budget intrigue" that is "flamboyantly irreverent, unabashedly gay and teeming with men in high heels and pantyhose." The bizarre sometimes free-form soap-opera was aired from 1997 to 2007 and has multi-racial cast of straight and LGBTQ actors. The show was "one of the few public displays of homosexuality in a blue-collar borough that is a bastion of Latin machismo" The show was also broadcast on Manhattan Neighborhood Network and Queens Public Television.{{cite news |last=Fernandez |first=Manny |title=A Gay Soap (and Soapbox) in the Bronx |work=The New York Times |date=May 7, 2006 |url = https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/nyregion/07access.html?pagewanted=print |access-date=2007-11-15}}

The fruit machine

The fruit machine was a pseudoscientific machine built to aid in the detection of gay people in the Canadian Civil Service from 1950 to 1973.{{cite book |last=Adams |first=Mary Louise |title=The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality |publisher=University of Toronto Press |date=1997 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=piG4Uprd-RoC&q=jonathan+ned+katz+fruit |access-date=2007-11-15 |isbn=978-0-8020-8057-8 }} In discussing his choice for naming a 1994 Ontario gay and lesbian film and video retrospective and then re-using the phrase for his book The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema, film critic Thomas Waugh explains {{blockquote|"[I]n the late fifties and early sixties our very own Mounties, ever conscious of security threats, had commissioned research into a mechanical devices for detecting homosexuality, inspired by similar research in the [United] States where McCarthyism and the sex panics had created a market for such lunatic pseudoscience. The idea was to unmask perverts by measuring involuntary pupillary dilations and other physiological reactions to pictures and words. Dubbed the fruit machine by terrified straight Mounties who didn't want to be the guinea pigs and whose security was already threatened, the technology came in several proposed models. One involved perspiratory responses to vocabulary with homosexual meanings like queen, circus, gay, bagpipe, bell, whole, blind, mother, punk, queer, rim, sew, swing, trade, velvet, wolf, blackmail, prowl, bar, house, club, restaurant, tea room, and top men."{{cite book |last=Waugh |first=Thomas |title=The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema |publisher=Duke University Press |date=2000| page= 7 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=F1X3Sx77OdoC&q=fruit+effeminate&pg=PA27 |access-date=2007-11-14 |isbn=978-0-8223-2468-3}}}} Other devices involved showing subjects pictures of seminude men and measuring eye movement or attention span. {{blockquote|"Basically they'd show suspected homos slides of naked men and measure their responses (dilated eyeballs, sweaty palms). The poor dilated sweaty souls would then be fired or arrested. Needless to say, the Mounties' machine was a crock: after a decade of breathtaking inaccuracy, it was consigned to mothballs."{{cite book |last=Waugh |first=Thomas |title=The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema |publisher=Duke University Press |date=2000|page=x (intro by John Greyson) |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=F1X3Sx77OdoC&q=fruit+effeminate&pg=PA27 |access-date=2007-11-14 |isbn=978-0-8223-2468-3}}}}

The Fruit Machine is an ITV Productions 1988 thriller about two Brighton gay teenagers running from an underworld assassin and the police.{{cite news |last=Waxman |first=Sharon |title=The Fruit Machine (1988) |url = https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/131998/The-Fruit-Machine/overview |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090316084915/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/131998/The-Fruit-Machine/overview |url-status = dead |archive-date = 2009-03-16 |department=Movies & TV Dept. |work=The New York Times |date=2009 |access-date=2007-11-16}}{{cite web |last = MS Time Out film reviewer |title = The Fruit Machine |publisher = Time Out New York |year = 2006 |url = http://www.timeout.com/film/newyork/reviews/67141/The_Fruit_Machine.html |access-date = 2007-11-16 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090304032906/http://www.timeout.com/film/newyork/reviews/67141/The_Fruit_Machine.html |archive-date = 2009-03-04

On 8 July 1992 The Fruit Machine weekly club for "queers, dykes and their friends" opened at England's largest gay dance venue Heaven in London and recently celebrated their fifteenth anniversary.;{{cite web |title=Fruit Machine |publisher=Heaven London |year=2007 |url=http://www.heaven-london.com/london/clubs/index.asp |access-date=2007-11-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071109114909/http://www.heaven-london.com/london/clubs/index.asp |archive-date=2007-11-09 |url-status=dead

Fruit salad

On June 1, 1963, Alfred Chester of The New York Review of Books gave an extremely unfavorable review of gay author John Rechy's first novel City Of Night under the disparaging title "Fruit Salad"{{cite web |last=Chester |first=Alfred |title=Fruit Salad |publisher=The New York Review of Books |date=June 1, 1963|volume=1|number=2 |url = http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=13694 |access-date=2007-11-15}} including speculation that Rechy was a pseudonym. The story is of a male hustler seeking love while working the streets of New York City, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. It was later revealed that the book was at least partly autobiographical.{{cite web |last = McLeod |first = Ernie |title = Queer Classics: John Rechy's "City of Night" |publisher = Out In The Mountains |date = March 3, 2002 |url = http://www.mountainpridemedia.org/oitm/issues/2002/03mar2002/ae10_qclassics.htm |access-date = 2007-11-15 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071106123817/http://mountainpridemedia.org/oitm/issues/2002/03mar2002/ae10_qclassics.htm |archive-date = November 6, 2007

In South Africa, fruit salad refers to male genitals{{cite book |last1=Cage |first1=Ken |first2=Eric Julian|last2=Manalastas|first3=Denise Gabrielle A.|last3=Sese|first4=Arlene|last4=Catanghal|title=Gayle: The Language of Kinks and Queens : a History and Dictionary of Gay Language in South Africa |publisher=Jacana Media |date=2003 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=WSn7026sq_cC&q=fruit+effeminate&pg=PA70 |access-date=2007-11-15 |isbn=978-1-919931-49-4 }} while elsewhere it can refer to a group of gay men, a set of military medals and badges or a selection of drugs (because of the various colors) or even a mixture of marijuana and hashish called a fruit salad bowl referring to the pipe used to smoke the mixture, the later two in the context of gay men partaking of them.

Frozen Fruit

A gay slang term from the 1970s meaning a sexually uninterested gay man.

Suck a Fruit for Anita

In the 1970s Anita Bryant became the spokesperson for Florida orange juice, making a series of television commercials for them. She is also widely known for her strong views against homosexuality, and for her prominent Save Our Children campaign to prevent gay equality by overturning a 1977 Dade County (now Miami-Dade County) human-rights ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Bryant led a highly publicized successful campaign to repeal the ordinance waged on what was labeled Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality and the perceived threat of homosexual recruitment of children and child molestation. The campaign was the start of an organized opposition to gay rights that spread across the nation and many credit it as a second Stonewall mobilizing LGBTQ people to come out of their closets.{{cite web |last=Sims |first=Robert |title=Strange Fruit: Take that, Anita Bryant! The Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival is reclaiming the orange |publisher=Miami New Times |date=April 26, 2007 |url=http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2007-04-26/film/strange-fruit/ |access-date=2007-11-15 |archive-date=2007-10-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071009171632/http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2007-04-26/film/strange-fruit/ |url-status=dead

Fruit Loops

Jonathon Green, author of Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, lists several definitions for "Fruit Loops" including the loop at the back of a man's shirt collar which can be used to "hold a victim ready for buggery" (circa 1980 on college campuses), gay men{{cite web |last = Nues |first = Boozie Beer |title = Mobile Magnified |publisher = Lagniappe |date = 2007-11-06 |url = http://www.lagniappemobile.com/article/1171 |access-date = 2007-11-16 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071111083227/http://www.lagniappemobile.com/article/1171 |archive-date = 2007-11-11 |title=Las Vegas Gay Bars in Paradise Fruit Loop |publisher=Gay Cities |date=2005–2007 |url = http://lasvegas.gaycities.com/bars/nid/2201/ |access-date=2007-11-16}} A fruitloop can also refer to a person considered crazy.

Fruit Loops, (also singular Fruit Loop and Fruitloops) are also Freedom Rings), a set of six rainbow-colored metal rings worn as necklaces, bracelets, etc., to symbolize gay pride or solidarity with LGBTQ people that were popularized in the 1990s.{{cite book |last=Green |first=Jonathon |title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang |publisher=Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. |date=2006 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&q=%22Fruit+Loops%22+gay&pg=PA549 |access-date=2007-11-15 |isbn=978-0-304-36636-1 }}{{Cite news | last = Van Gelder | first = Lindsy | title = Thing; Freedom Rings | newspaper = New York Times | date = 1992-06-21 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/21/style/thing-freedom-rings.html | access-date = 2010-07-21 For National Coming Out Day (United States held 11 October) students have made home-made versions of the "freedom rings" with actual Froot Loops cereal. As a fundraiser, an LGBTQ student group has made Rice Krispies treat using Froot Loops cereal and called them "Fruity Gay Bars".{{Cite news | last = Lobron | first = Alison | title = Easy Out | newspaper = Boston Globe | date = 2007-11-11 | url = http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2007/11/11/easy_out/?page=full | access-date = 2010-07-21

''Fruit Punch''

Fruit Punch was one of the first gay radio show in the United States,{{cite web |title = The Rest Of Our World..... |publisher = Out In The Mountains |date = April 2000 |url = http://www.mountainpridemedia.org/oitm/issues/2000/apr2000/news_wbriefs.htm |access-date = 2007-11-14 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071128022103/http://www.mountainpridemedia.org/oitm/issues/2000/apr2000/news_wbriefs.htm |archive-date = 2007-11-28 |last=Zoellner |first=Tom |title=Roland Schembari -- Co-Founder of S.F. Bay Times |publisher=Out In The Mountains |date=February 24, 2000 |url = http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/02/24/MN79034.DTL |access-date=2007-11-14}} and possibly the world, which aired weekly from 1973 to 1979 from Berkeley radio station KPFA, the first listener-supported radio broadcaster in the United States. Audio from the program is archived by the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.

Fruit stand

In South Africa a fruit stand is a gay bar while in the US it is an area to pick up gay male hustlers.

In 1983, Frank Robinson, then manager of the San Francisco Giants, joked that the team is planning to have a special seating section for gays. "Instead of a grandstand," he says, "We're going to call it a fruit stand."{{cite web |last=de la Croix |first=Sukie |title=Gay History: What a Difference a Gay Makes: February 9–15 |publisher=Same Same |date=2003-02-12 |url = http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=2547 |access-date=2007-11-16}}

Speaking of "celebrated fag hag" and former Warhol superstar Dorothy Dean, author Hilton Als writes (she) "reigned, with both cruelty and compassion, over that site of urban gay culture she called 'the fruit stand'."{{cite web |last = Silberman |first = Seth Clark |title = "Youse Awful Queer, Chappie": Reading Black Queer vernacular in Black Literatures of The Americas, 1903-1967 |publisher = University of Maryland |year = 2005 |url = https://drum.umd.edu/dspace/bitstream/1903/2883/1/umi-umd-2662.pdf |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081002014705/https://drum.umd.edu/dspace/bitstream/1903/2883/1/umi-umd-2662.pdf |url-status = dead |archive-date = 2008-10-02 |access-date = 2007-11-16

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a 1985 novel by Jeanette Winterson which she subsequently adapted into a BBC television drama. It is about a lesbian girl who grows up in an extremely religious community. The main character is a young girl named Jeanette (Jess in the TV serial) who is adopted by evangelists, who believe she is destined to become a missionary. However, Jeanette finds herself subject to desires and feelings that contrast with the beliefs of the evangelical church. Because of these feelings, she finds herself subject to horrific practices and exorcisms, encouraged by her mother and her mother's friends.

The novel interweaves Biblical passages thus exploring the tension many LGBTQ people have with organized religion and Christianity in particular. The phrase "Be fruitful, and multiply" has been cited to support theories that God does not believe in gay rights, LGBTQ people are not born as such and instead have made a lifestyle choice and that God does not approve of homosexuality.

''Tropical Fruits''

Tropical Fruits is the name of an LGBTQ grassroots community group led by xGarbageFire in Lismore in northern NSW Australia that hosts a number of gatherings throughout the year culminating in an annual New Year's Eve multi-day party. They started in 1988 and attract international travelers to the middle of the Australian bush with attendance of 3,500 people. "We've got oldies, youngies, fairies, muscle marys, trannies, queens, vanilla dykes, butch dykes, femme dykes, Michaels – that's what we call the vanilla boys," she laughs, "and we all hang out here together. Our parties are very camp, very queer – we embrace the full queer mix."{{cite web |last = Taylor |first = Christian |title = Time To Get Your Fruit On |publisher = Same Same |date = 2007-10-26 |url = http://www.samesame.com.au/features/1549/Time-To-Get-Your-Fruit-On.htm |access-date = 2007-11-16 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071028153608/http://www.samesame.com.au/features/1549/Time-To-Get-Your-Fruit-On.htm |archive-date = 2007-10-28

Fruit Juice

Fruit Juice is a name of a magazine started in 1988 by "two dykes and two poofters" in Lismore in northern NSW Australia that was a focal point for the formation of the Tropical Fruits community group. It can also refer to semen for or from a gay man.

Fruit fly

People who associate with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people may be called fruit flies (along with fruit bats) regardless of their sex. Fruit fly can also refer to a gay man.

Females associated with gay males are also known as fag hags, whereas men associated with lesbians are known as dyke tykes, Dutch boys, lesbros or lezbros.

In South Africa the definition seems more stringent as a woman with only gay male friends while in Filipino culture "fruit fly" is based on a metaphor of a woman buzzing around gay men.

References

Danny. (2007). "Strange Fruit". Nighttours.com.
"Brewer, E. Cobham. Dictionary of Phrase & Fable – Costard".
''One Small Step for Genkind''. In Exploring Language; Miller, C., Swift, K. (1992: page 220), Harper Collins.
(2006-09-26). "Lexigraphy: Piccadilly Polari".
(16 September 2015). "History of Fruitcake". whatscookingamerica.net.
nutty as a fruitcake. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Houghton Mifflin Company. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nutty as a fruitcake (accessed: December 04, 2014).
"Strange Fruits TV".
Brumfitt, Stuart. (2006-11-12). "Reggay Boyz". (Guardian) The Observer.
"City of Night".
Rechy, John. (October 31, 1996). "Complaint (Re: Fruit Salad)". [[The New York Review of Books]].
Woolhouse, Bob. (18 December 1986). "Spiking Up Fruit Punch". [[Bay Area Reporter]].
"Audio Search".
Newall, Venetia. (1986). "Folklore and Male Homosexuality". Folklore.
Wassersug, Richard. (August 2005). "Six Rules for Dyke Tykes".
Stein, Joshua. (July 2009). "Straight Men and Their Lesbian Best Friends".
Gumbley, India. (5 September 2011). "Top 10 reasons to get yourself a lesbro".
(14 August 2009). "Lesbians and the men they call their friends".
(8–10 July 2005). "Fag Hags in Filipino Gay Culture: Friendships, Identities, and Personality". University of the Philippines Diliman.

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