Word.ws English Dictionary

fruit and flowers

fruit and flowers noun: illicit purchased items such as recreational drugs or prostitutes.

Noun

fruit and flowers pl (plural only)

  1. (especially, euphemistic, jargon, plural, plural-only) Illicit purchased items such as recreational drugs or prostitutes.
    • Most journalists I know are actually rather scrupulous with their expenses – although I do know of one who tried to pass off one of their children's birthday parties as a networking opportunity (hats off!). However, I've been thinking of some of the things I might have been able to claim myself...2009 May 23, Dylan Jones, “Who's pinched all the paper clips?”, in Daily Mail
    • Mr Hands was criticised for his robust managerial style, forcing through redundancies and highlighting excessive costs such as the £200,000 spent annually on "fruit and flowers" and £20,000 a month on candles.2010 September 28, Cahal Milmo, “A bad buy – with a little help from his friends?”, in The Independent
  2. (plural, plural-only) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see fruit, flower.

Synonyms of fruit and flowers

Origin of fruit and flowers

Such illicit purchases might be explained away in a budget as spending on fruit and flowers.

Questions about fruit and flowers

What does fruit and flowers mean?
Fruit and flowers means illicit purchased items such as recreational drugs or prostitutes.
What part of speech is fruit and flowers?
Fruit and flowers is a noun.

Words near fruit and flowers in the dictionary

  1. frugs
  2. Fruhwirth
  3. Fruhwirths
  4. Fruin
  5. fruit
  6. fruit and flowers
  7. fruit basket hat
  8. fruit basket hats
  9. fruit bat
  10. fruit bats
  11. fruit bodies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fruit and flowers (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “fruit and flowers.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fruit_and_flowers. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.