Fruition likewise had a single meaning in English for several hundred years; it meant “enjoyment; the act of enjoying something” from the beginning of the fifteenth century until the twentieth. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, some language philistines confusedly assumed that it must have something to do with the ripening of fruit and began to use it in the sense of “to come to a desired result.” Use of fruition in this secondary sense now far outstrips its use in the former sense.
