One of the at least one - followed by singular or plural noun? [closed]

Which of the following is correct:

    (a) One of the at least one fruit; or
    (b) One of the at least one fruits

Solution 1:

One of MUST be followed by plural. You cannot say *one of one, but you can say one of (at least) two or more.

Learnex explains:

• One of is a singular term and generally used to talk about a noun or a pronoun.
• The noun or a pronoun used after the phrase “one of” is always in the plural form ( as we are talking of one person/place/thing out of many)
• The helping verb will always be in the singular form, as the helping verb agrees with “one of” and not with the plural noun in the sentence.

Technically speaking, it is grammatical to interpose at least between one of and the complement of the preposition of, but that does not change the fact that the complement must be plural.

So you can only say

One of the at least two [or more] fruits

Note that fruits in the plural fruits is a particular use in order to emphasise the different kinds of fruit.

However, the expression one of the at least can be confusing. There may be rare instances where would you choose one of at least a number of items from a category? It is more common to single out the one:

At least one of the fruits