low-hanging fruit

noun

low-hang·​ing fruit ˈlō-ˈhaŋ-iŋ- 

: the obvious or easy things that can be most readily done or dealt with in achieving success or making progress toward an objective

Maria and Victor have about three months' living expenses set aside. That's actually pretty good …. But I urged them to do better …. Looking at their monthly expenses, we found a few pieces of low-hanging fruit: Two hundred dollars a month on clothes? I don't think so. Another $155 for hair and manicures? Denied.

—Suze Orman

—often used with pick

As the writers and producers sat down in spring 2007 to draw the outlines of Season 7, they knew, Mr. Gordon said, that most of the low-hanging fruit in the action genre had already been picked.

—Edward Wyatt

When business types talk about picking low-hanging fruit, they don't mean, heaven forbid, doing actual physical labor. They mean finding easy solutions.

—Allan Sloan

Examples of low-hanging fruit in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

One piece of low-hanging fruit is having Attorney General Pam Bondi rescind the Biden Justice Department's (DOJ) plan to bail out pharmaceutical giant Moderna to the tune of up to $3 billion for alleged patent infringement. —Ross Rosenfeld, Newsweek, 25 Feb. 2025

Similarly, determining where to begin involves identifying not only the low-hanging fruit but also the long-term opportunities that align with your strategic objectives. —Barry Libert, Forbes, 23 Jan. 2025

And so the low-hanging fruit is to focus on those last few plays, which, yeah, are important. —Jay King, The Athletic, 19 Jan. 2025

In effect, the cut of USAID funding is low-hanging fruit when advanced by an autocrat seeking easy political points. —Bill Gray, The Mercury News, 12 Feb. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1909, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for low-hanging fruit

• irresolute
• reconstitute
• absolute
• arrowroot
• attribute
• bitterroot
• constitute
• convolute
• destitute
• disrepute
• dissolute
• execute