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I know we can use both fruit and fruits (countable noun and uncountable noun):

  1. The fruit began to rot.

  2. The fruits began to rot.

What has confused me is passion fruit because it has the word fruit in it! Is passion fruit a noun, or is it an adjective (passion) and a noun (fruit)? I assume the former but I am not sure because of the singular/plural forms of mouse/mice (in regards to the animal and computer equipment — same word, but different meanings). This is why I am questioning my own ears when I say the following out loud:

  1. There are many passion fruit in this bowl.

  2. There are many passion fruits in this bowl.

I have read Is using "fruits" as the plural of "fruit" acceptable? which is nearly a dupe other than it doesn’t specifically state by region, and although fruit is used as an example I’m not sure if it applies as I’m talking about a different noun.

So my two questions are

  1. Are all four examples acceptable in English?
  2. Are all four examples acceptable in American English?
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  • Close parallels are kiwi fruit, sharon fruit, star fruit and ugli fruit. Differing only in that it is a single word is grapefruit. I can't say that I have ever heard grapefruits and rarely, if ever, heard the plural form of the others. I would say that that passion fruit is its own plural. By the way I'm a British English native speaker. Commented Sep 20, 2016 at 14:07
  • It's not nearly a dupe, it's a dupe. The accepted answer is "Fruit can be used as an uncountable noun or a countable noun in which case the plural form would be fruits. In the example sentence, both usages are acceptable." As part of the compound "passion fruit" the same applies (your example being one where it's countable, though). Commented Sep 21, 2016 at 13:16

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