The Columnist Manifesto

What are spiders thinking when they repeatedly build and rebuild a web right in the path to your car so you have to wreck it (the web, not the car) every day? Janelle Renee tells us at Just Thoughts.

Elsewhere in that post, Janelle used the phrase "most of my fears never fruit" and then footnoted a disclaimer:

*Thanks to my honey for pointing out that the phrase is "never come to fruition". I am also the world's worst phrase person...

After consulting Webster.com and my own conscience, I have to say, "No, Janelle, you just have a poetic streak."

According to Webster, the second entry for "fruit" is the intransitive verb meaning "to bear fruit," which is what Janelle was saying.

Can we say that "to bear fruit" means something positive, whereas "come to fruition" connotes neutrality, so that while good or bad things "come to fruition" only good things "fruit"? Well, not really:

"fruition": 2 a : the state of bearing fruit b : REALIZATION

And is all fruit good? What about rotten fruit, wormey apples, or the fruit of the poisonous tree? No, the only difference is that "come to fruition" involves more and bigger words, and a dead rather than still breathing metaphor. Janelle, don't sell yourself short!