Word.ws English Dictionary

strange fruit

strange fruit noun: a person who has been lynched by hanging; such people collectively.

Noun

strange fruit (uncountable)

  1. A person who has been lynched by hanging; such people collectively.
    • Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root1937 January, Abel Meeropol, “Bitter Fruit”, in The New York Teacher
    • We speak for the brothers behind bars whose words, at the very least, must be liberated
      We speak for the strange fruit hung from trees
      We speak for the brothers who drowned in alcohol, and whose spirits were pierced by needles1986, Joseph Beam, “Introduction”, in In The Life

Origin of strange fruit

From a poem by Abel Meeropol later recorded by Billie Holiday (1939), see quotations.

Questions about strange fruit

What does strange fruit mean?
Strange fruit means a person who has been lynched by hanging; such people collectively.
What part of speech is strange fruit?
Strange fruit is a noun.

Words near strange fruit in the dictionary

  1. strange bedfellow
  2. strange bedfellows
  3. strange bird
  4. strange birds
  5. strange fish
  6. strange fruit
  7. strange loop
  8. strange loops
  9. strange matter
  10. strange quark
  11. strange quark matter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: strange 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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