Word.ws English Dictionary

low-hanging fruit

low-hanging fruit noun: easily obtained gains; what can be obtained by readily available means.

low-hanging fruit: easily obtained gains; what can be obtained by readily available means
Image: Gerard van Honthorst, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

low-hanging fruit (plural low-hanging fruits)

  1. (idiomatic) Easily obtained gains; what can be obtained by readily available means.
    • Low-hanging fruits are those actions that garner early agreement and that are obtainable in the short run.2004, Sarah James with Torbjörn Lahti, The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns Can Change to, page 201
    • the low-hanging fruit are picked first2007, Nick Johnstone, Environmental Policy and Corporate Behaviour, page 97

Examples of low-hanging fruit in a sentence

  • But, Florida aside, the low-hanging fruit is not in Dixie.2008, Thomas F. Schaller, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, page 166:
  • But, we want to identify, the low-hanging fruit that we can harvest this year.2010, Dany Shukran, Best Practices: On Conducting International Meetings, page 18:
  • The link to London Gateway could be wired for £8 million, which it called the "the lowest of low-hanging fruit".2024 June 26, Paul Clifton, “Rail freight's agenda to survive and thrive”, in RAIL, number 1012, page 41:
  • For Tram Trains for Edinburgh Secretary Mark Boggis, the South Sub [South Suburban Railway] is "low-hanging fruit" which could be developed "relatively quickly".2025 November 26, Conrad Landin, “Edinburgh eyes on tram-trains?”, in RAIL, number 1049, page 35:

Antonyms of low-hanging fruit

Forms of low-hanging fruit

plurallow-hanging fruits
alternative formlow hanging fruit

Questions about low-hanging fruit

What does low-hanging fruit mean?
Low-hanging fruit means easily obtained gains; what can be obtained by readily available means.
How do you use low-hanging fruit in a sentence?
But, Florida aside, the low-hanging fruit is not in Dixie.
What part of speech is low-hanging fruit?
Low-hanging fruit is a noun.
What is the plural of low-hanging fruit?
The plural of low-hanging fruit is low-hanging fruits.

Words near low-hanging fruit in the dictionary

  1. low-grade fever
  2. low-grade fevers
  3. low-growing
  4. low-hangers
  5. low-hanging
  6. low-hanging fruit
  7. low-hanging fruits
  8. low-hat
  9. low-hats
  10. low-hearted
  11. low-heartedly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: low-hanging fruit (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-low-hanging fruit.wav, En-au-low-hanging fruit.ogg.

Cite this entry: “low-hanging fruit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/low-hanging_fruit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.