"I often buy fruit" vs "I often buy fruits"?

These are the grammar guidelines:

To say things in general,

we can use an uncount noun with no article.

Eg: I like cheese

or

we can use a plural count noun with no article.

Eg: I like dogs

So, what about a noun that has both countable & uncountable form. E.g.: Fruit

So, should we say: "I often buy fruit at the supermarket" or "I often buy fruits at the supermarket"

Most native speakers say that "I often buy fruit at the supermarket" sounds better and "I often buy fruits at the supermarket" sounds strange because of fruits.

But I did apply the above rule, "we can use a plural count noun with no article to say things in general."

Is it true that when talking about a noun in general and when that noun has both countable and uncountable forms, that the uncountable form has higher priority?

Solution 1:

Actually, I think you need to deal with each case individually.

Even though many English nouns have count and non-count usages, it's rare for them to be equally common. Usually one use is clearly primary. Also, the different uses often have different meanings. "Fruit" is unusual in that it is commonly used as a plural form, and the mass and count meanings are pretty much the same.

For example, "chicken" has mass and count uses, but by default, the mass use is used to refer to meat, not living chickens. The count use is used to refer to living chickens, and could possibly refer to entire carcasses. People would normally say "I bought chicken at the store" but if you are buying an entire dead bird to cook, it is certainly acceptable to say "I bought a chicken at the store" to convey that information. The choice between mass and count doesn't really have to do with a general rule of "priority", but with the specific semantic point that meat is usually referred to with mass nouns.

In another context, it might make more sense to use a plural count noun. For example, "rock" can be used as a mass or count noun. When used as a mass noun, it tends to convey the idea of a continuous, or at least contiguous, mass. So in a sentence like "geologists study rocks", where you want to refer to many different kinds of rocks that don't constitute a continuous mass, the plural count noun is more appropriate.

Solution 2:

As @Peter Shor mentioned in his comment, when a noun has both a countable and an uncountable form, they usually have different meanings.

Fruit could mean a single piece of fruit or multiple of the same type of fruit. Fruits means multiple types of fruit.

An apple is a fruit. Apples are fruit. Apples and oranges are fruits.

This pattern is pretty common. Some other examples are fish and fishes, and people and peoples. In colloquial speech, it is very common for people to use the uncountable version of a noun in place of the countable version for brevity or simply because it sounds more natural.

EDIT: After doing some research, I concur with the commenters that fruit on its own to mean multiple species of fruit is considered proper grammar. The uncountable can be used in place of the countable, but not vice versa.

Apples and oranges are fruit.

Solution 3:

Check this dictionary:

Fruit is usually uncountable:

I love fruit.

✗Don’t say: I love fruits.

• Fruit is used as a countable noun when talking about particular types of fruit:

They grow mainly citrus fruits.