In the manner or direction of fruit; concerning or relating to fruit.
Compound of 'fruit' (from Latin fructus, meaning 'produce' or 'harvest') and '-wise' (Old English suffix meaning 'manner' or 'direction'). The '-wise' suffix became productive in English for creating adverbs describing orientation or manner.
The '-wise' suffix is incredibly productive in modern English—we see it in 'clockwise,' 'otherwise,' and 'lengthwise'—but it's rarely attached to organic nouns like 'fruit,' making this a genuinely archaic word that shows how English speakers once described the world before modern scientific terminology took over.
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