[extended form of prec.: see -ER1 3.]
1. A dealer in fruit; a fruit-seller.
1408. Close Roll 9 Hen. IV. b. Thomas Sebeche, ffruterer.
1556. J. Heywood, Spider & F., Ss j b. The frewte … on the frewterers hande lying.
1597. Shaks., 2 Hen. IV., III. ii. 36. The very same-day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a Fruiterer.
1650. Howell, Giraffi’s Rev. Naples, I. (1664), 12. Telling the fruiterers that they should pay the gabell.
1720. Gay, Poems (1745), I. 167.
| Walnuts the fruit’rer’s hand, in autumn, stain, | |
| Blue plumbs and juicy pears augment his gain. |
1815. Elphinstone, Acc. Caubul (1842), I. 75. Amongst the handsomest shops were the fruiterers’.
1875. Hamerton, Intell. Life, IX. i. 301. Careful as a fruiterer is of the bloom upon his grapes.
† 2. A fruit-grower. Obs.
1612. Drayton, Poly-olb., xviii. 298. The Pear-maine … Which carefull frut’rers now have denizend our owne.
1615. W. Lawson, Orch. & Gard., III. i. (1668), 1. Whosoever desireth and indeavoureth to have a pleasant and profitable Orchard, must (if he be able) provide himself of a fruiterer, Religious, Honest, Skilful in that faculty, and therewithall painfull.
1813. Sir H. Davy, Agric. Chem. (1814), 255. Most of our best apples are supposed to have been introduced into Britain by a fruiterer of Henry the Eighth, and they are now in a state of old age.
