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

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Subscription services are low-hanging fruit, but one disruptive technology could change the game. —Q.ai - Powering A Personal Wealth Movement, Forbes, 21 Feb. 2023

These exposures are low-hanging fruit for hackers to pluck. —Lily Hay Newman, WIRED, 17 Feb. 2023

And that’s the low-hanging fruit on the wish lists of immigrant advocates — including business groups that want a more orderly guest-worker program. —Dallas News, 8 Feb. 2023

The chances are that the low-hanging fruit of foul outputs will likely be kept in check by such AI techniques. —Lance Eliot, Forbes, 5 Feb. 2023

But, historically, the program has been targeted as low-hanging fruit during budget renegotiations. —The New Yorker, 19 Dec. 2022

Why the bar concentrates its resources on cases that are viewed as low-hanging fruit is related to its funding, The Times found. —Los Angeles Times, 16 Dec. 2022

Angela Perri, an assistant professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University, says the study of dire wolves became pretty low-hanging fruit after the show aired. —Connor Lynch, Discover Magazine, 14 Dec. 2022

Many consumer electronic companies have significantly reduced their reliance on single-use plastics and nonrecyclable packaging, which many in the industry agree was the low-hanging fruit of the current sustainability movement. —Abigail Bassett, Fortune, 3 Oct. 2022

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Word History

First Known Use

1909, in the meaning defined above