What does fig mean?
A fig is the sweet, soft, pear-shaped fruit of the fig tree, a plant of the genus Ficus in the mulberry family, cultivated for thousands of years around the Mediterranean and beyond. The flesh is packed with tiny seeds and has a distinctive honeyed flavor, making figs popular both fresh and dried in cooking, baking, and cheese pairings. By extension, 'fig' also refers to the tree itself, which has large lobed leaves and appears prominently in religious and classical texts. Figuratively, an outdated idiom calls something worthless 'not worth a fig', reflecting an older sense of the fruit as the smallest, most trivial unit of value. The word carries warm, rustic, and slightly indulgent connotations today, evoking Mediterranean summers and traditional preserves. Its history runs deep: figs are among the oldest cultivated fruits, and the Greek word for fig survives in English inside 'sycophant'. Few common nouns connect botany, cuisine, and ancient language so directly.
nounA soft, sweet, pear-shaped fruit with many small seeds, borne by the fig tree (Ficus carica); also, the tree itself, a member of the mulberry family.
- The edible, sweet, pear-shaped multiple fruit of the fig tree, eaten fresh or dried.
- The fig tree itself (genus Ficus), which bears this fruit.
- Something of little value, used chiefly in old-fashioned expressions such as 'not worth a fig'.
"She spread goat cheese on the toast and topped it with slices of ripe fig."
"The orchard's fig trees were heavy with fruit by late August."
"His apologies weren't worth a fig after he made the same mistake again."
Standard regular plural; used both for multiple fruits and collectively for crops or servings.
"The market stalls were piled high with fresh figs."
The ancient Greeks linked figs to shameful exposure so tightly that 'sycophant' literally means 'fig-shower' — an informer.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of fig
The English word 'fig' comes from the Old French 'figue', borrowed ultimately from Latin 'ficus', meaning the fig tree and its fruit. The Latin term descends from an earlier Mediterranean source shared with Greek 'sykon', which likewise denoted the fig. This Greek root lives on in English words such as 'sycophant', originally meaning someone who informed on others when they were exporting figs, and in the genus name Ficus still used in botany.
Related word forms
How fig is actually used
In everyday modern English, 'fig' almost always means the fruit or the tree; the dismissive sense survives only in fixed, somewhat dated phrases like 'not worth a fig'. In British slang, 'full fig' can mean smart or formal dress, though this is informal and regional.