Dried plums, often eaten as a snack or used in cooking; also a verb meaning to trim branches from a tree.
From Old French 'prune,' from Latin 'prunum,' from Greek 'proumnon.' The fruit and the cutting action are separate in origin but merged in English usage—pruning comes from 'prune' as an old word meaning to cut.
Prunes are famous in biology textbooks as an example of how drying preserves food—they're plums with 75% of the water removed, which concentrates sugars and gave them their reputation as a digestive aid for centuries.
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