blackberry

 

From Middle English blakberie, blakeberie (“brambleberry”), from Old English blacu berġe, blæcberġe (attested in plural blaca berġan, equivalent to black +‎ berry.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈblækbəɹi/, /ˈblækbɹi/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈblækbɛɹi/

• Audio (US):

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blackberry (plural blackberries)

1. A fruit-bearing shrub of the aggregate species Rubus fruticosus and some hybrids.

   Synonyms: bramble, brambleberry

3. The soft fruit borne by this shrub, formed of a black (when ripe) cluster of drupelets.

   Synonyms: bramble, brambleberry

4. (UK, dialectal) The blackcurrant.

blackberry (third-person singular simple present blackberries, present participle blackberrying, simple past and past participle blackberried)

1. To gather or forage for blackberries.
   • 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, published 2006, →ISBN, page 111:

     My mother and Cordelia were blackberrying along the woods edge of a nearby meadow.

   • 1988, 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.

   • 2001, Thomas Keneally, Victim of the Aurora, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published 2001, →ISBN, 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, published 2004, →ISBN, 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.

• blackberrying

•   blackberry on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
•   Rubus fruticosus on Wikispecies.Wikispecies