blackberry
See also: BlackBerry
English
![](../I/Blackberries_on_bush.jpg.webp)
Blackberries on a bush
Etymology
From Middle English blakberie, blakeberie (“brambleberry”), from Old English blæc berġe, blæc-berie (attested in plural blace berġan, blace berian (“brambleberries; blackberries”)), equivalent to black + berry.
Noun
blackberry (plural blackberries)
- A fruit-bearing shrub of the species Rubus fruticosus and some hybrids.
- The soft fruit borne by this shrub, formed of a black (when ripe) cluster of drupelets.
- (Britain, in some regions) The blackcurrant.
Synonyms
- (shrub and fruit): bramble, brambleberry
Derived terms
Translations
shrub
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fruit
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blackcurrant — see blackcurrant
Verb
blackberry (third-person singular simple present blackberries, present participle blackberrying, simple past and past participle blackberried)
- To gather or forage for blackberries.
- Arthur Bryson Gerrard, Butterflies & coalsmoke (page 62)
- Thereafter we blackberried unceasingly and returned with a large basketful, together with some maggoty windfall apples found neglected in the wet grass on the edge of an orchard and Mrs Clare duly stewed these for us.
- 1925, Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway:
- She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun
- 1977, Howard Frank Mosher, Disappearances, Mariner Books (2006), ISBN 9780618694068, page 111:
- My mother and Cordelia were blackberrying along the woods edge of a nearby meadow.
- 2001, Thomas Keneally, Victim of the Aurora, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2001), ISBN 9780156007337, page 72:
- My wife and children were blackberrying at the end of the garden and I was simply reading.
- 2004, Janet Bord, The Traveller's Guide to Fairy Sites: The Landscape and Folklore of Fairyland In England, Wales And Scotland, Gothic Image (2004), ISBN 9780906362648, page 48:
- Another instance of someone who is blackberrying and sees fairies can be found at Kingheriot Farm (South-West Wales: Pembrokeshire): maybe gathering berries puts the percipient into a relaxed or dissociated frame of mind, more conducive to being able to see things that one would perhaps not normally be able to see.
- Arthur Bryson Gerrard, Butterflies & coalsmoke (page 62)
Derived terms
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