berry

English Online Dictionary. What means berry‎? What does berry mean?

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɛɹ.i/; enPR: bĕr'i
• Rhymes: -ɛɹi
• Homophones: bury, Berry
• Homophones: Barry, beary (both only in accents with the Mary-marry-merry merger)

Etymology 1

From Middle English berye, from Old English berġe, from Proto-West Germanic *baʀi, from Proto-Germanic *bazją.

Cognate with Saterland Frisian Bäie, West Flemish beier, German Beere, Icelandic ber, Danish bær.

The slang sense "police car" may come from the lights on the vehicles' roofs.

Noun

berry (plural berries)

1. A small succulent fruit, of any one of many varieties.
2. (botany) A soft fruit which develops from a single ovary and contains seeds not encased in pits.
3. A coffee bean.
4. One of the ova or eggs of a fish or crustacean.
5. (slang, US, African-American) A police car.
6. (US, slang, dated) A dollar.

Usage notes

• Many fruits commonly regarded as berries, such as strawberries and raspberries, are not berries in the botanical sense, while many fruits which are berries in the botanical sense are not regarded as berries in common parlance, such as bananas and pumpkins.

Hypernyms

• fruit

Hyponyms

• See Thesaurus:berry § Hyponyms

Coordinate terms

• (succulent fruit): drupe, hesperidium, pome

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Indonesian: beri
• → Japanese: ベリー (berī)
• → Thai: เบอร์รี (bəə-rîi)

Translations

References

Verb

berry (third-person singular simple present berries, present participle berrying, simple past and past participle berried)

1. To pick berries.
2. To bear or produce berries.

Usage notes

• Unlikely to be used to refer to commercial harvesting of berries.

Derived terms

• berrying

Etymology 2

From Middle English berȝe, berghe, from Old English beorġe, dative form of beorg (“mountain, hill, mound, barrow”), from Proto-West Germanic *berg, from Proto-Germanic *bergaz (“mountain, hill”). More at barrow.

Alternative forms

• berye, berie

Noun

berry (plural berries)

1. (now chiefly dialectal) A mound; a barrow.

Etymology 3

From Middle English bery (“a burrow”). More at burrow.

Noun

berry (plural berries)

1. (dialectal) A burrow, especially a rabbit's burrow.
2. An excavation; a military mine.

Etymology 4

From Middle English beryen, berien, from Old English *berian (found only in past participle ġebered (“crushed, kneaded, harassed, oppressed, vexed”)), from Proto-West Germanic *barjan, from Proto-Germanic *barjaną (“to beat, hit”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH- (“to rip, cut, split, grate”).

Cognate with Scots berry, barry (“to thresh, thrash”), German beren (“to beat, knead”), Icelandic berja (“to beat”), Latin feriō (“strike, hit”, verb).

Verb

berry (third-person singular simple present berries, present participle berrying, simple past and past participle berried)

1. (transitive) To beat; give a beating to; thrash.
2. (transitive) To thresh (grain).

Anagrams

• Bryer