English edit

Pronunciation edit

  • (file)

Noun edit

bag of fruit (plural bags of fruit)

  1. (Australia, rhyming slang) A suit (clothing). [From 1924.][1]
    • 1995, Overland, numbers 138-141, page 46:
      Very few of the males wore the bag of fruit. ‘Suits’ were becoming the contemptuous synechdoche now used in reference to members of the executive/managerial elite.
    • 2003, Brian Castro, Shanghai Dancing[1], page 377:
      One had spent much time in Queensland. Ah! he said, fingering my jacket. Australian bag of fruit.
    • 2009, Rex Ellis, Go with the Flow[2], page 43:
      A few nights later Patti dug out my ‘bag of fruit’, but there was no way I was going to wear that.
    • 2011, Christopher Kremmer, The Chase, unnumbered page:
      The bloke's suit looked made-to-order for someone else's body, not so much a bag of fruit as a crate of it, and his hat band was twice the normal width, more like a bandana.

References edit

  1. ^ Eric Partridge (2007) “bag of fruit”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Abingdon, Oxon., New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 28.