cherry

See also: Cherry

English
cherries of varying degrees of ripeness

Etymology

From Middle English chery, cherie, chirie, from Anglo-Norman cherise (mistaken as a plural) and Old English ċiris, ċirse (“cherry”), both ultimately from Vulgar Latin ceresia, derived from Late Latin ceresium, cerasium, from Ancient Greek κεράσιον (kerásion, “cherry fruit”), from κερασός (kerasós, “bird cherry”), and ultimately possibly of Anatolian origin (the intervocalic σ suggests a pre-Greek origin for the word).[1] Doublet of cerise.

Pronunciation
  • (UK, US) IPA(key): /ˈt͡ʃɛɹi/
  • Audio (UK)(file)
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Audio (AU)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛɹi

Noun

cherry (plural cherries)

  1. A small fruit, usually red, black or yellow, with a smooth hard seed and a short hard stem.
  2. Prunus subg. Cerasus, trees or shrubs that bear cherries.
  3. The wood of a cherry tree.
  4. Cherry red.
  5. (slang) Virginity, especially female virginity as embodied by a hymen.
    • 1986, Too Short (lyrics), “Short Side (Blow Job Betty)”, in Raw, Uncut and X-Rated, track 5, between 6:36 and 6:43:
      So what bitch, I busted your cherry –
      Hell fucking no, I don’t wanna git married
    • 2004, Nick Wright, Treading Ground #47 – Throwback
      In any case it’s ironic, considering there hasn’t been a cherry in the white house since Chelsea Clinton was fourteen.
  6. (graph theory) A subtree consisting of a node with exactly two leaves.
    • 2004, Suleyman Cenk Sahinalp, S Muthukrishnan, Ugur Dogrusoz, Combinatorial Pattern Matching
      Non-isomorphism is detected whenever the algorithm finds a cherry …
    • 2005, Lior Pachter, Bernd Sturmfels, Algebraic Statistics for Computational Biology
      Step 3: Output the tree T. The edge lengths of T are determined recursively: If (x,y) is a cherry connected to node z as in Step 2…
  7. (cricket) A cricket ball.

Usage notes

Cherry includes, but is not limited to, the following species, of the genus Prunus: Prunus avium (wild cherry, mazzard, sweet cherry), P. cerasus (sour cherry), P. mahaleb (mahaleb cherry, rock cherry), P. pensylvanica (pin cherry, bird cherry), P. pumila (sand cherry), P. serotina (black cherry), P. serrulata (Japanese flowering cherry, hill cherry), and P. virginiana (chokecherry). Prunus also includes plums, peaches, apricots, and almonds.

Hyponyms
other types of cherry tree and fruit

Descendants

Translations

See also

Adjective

cherry (comparative more cherry, superlative most cherry)

  1. Containing or having the taste of cherries.
  2. Of a bright red colour.
  3. (informal, often of cars) In excellent condition; mint condition.
    • 2003, Wilson, John Morgan, Blind Eye‎, St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 108:
      A few years earlier, I’d restored my ’65 Mustang convertible to cherry condition—fire engine red, with matching tuck-and-roll—and I wasn’t surprised that it drew attention.
    • 2006, "Weird Al" Yankovic (lyrics), “White & Nerdy”, in Straight Outta Lynwood, performed by "Weird Al" Yankovic:
      All of my action figures are cherry

Derived terms
terms derived from cherry

Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

See also

References
  1. Robert Stephen Paul Beekes (2010), “κέρασος”, in Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, →ISBN

Spanish

Noun

cherry m (plural cherrys or cherries)

  1. cherry tomato
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