Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Botany An indehiscent fruit derived from a single ovary and having the whole wall fleshy, such as a grape or tomato.
  • noun A small, juicy, fleshy fruit, such as a blackberry or raspberry, regardless of its botanical structure.
  • noun Any of various seeds or dried kernels, as of wheat.
  • noun One of the eggs of certain fishes or crustaceans, such as lobsters.
  • intransitive verb To hunt for or gather berries.
  • intransitive verb To bear or produce berries.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To bear or produce berries.
  • To gather berries: as, to go berrying.
  • noun A mound; a barrow.
  • noun A burrow, especially a rabbit's burrow.
  • noun An excavation; a military mine.
  • To beat; give a beating to.
  • To thresh (grain, etc.).
  • noun In botany: In ordinary use, any small pulpy fruit, as the huckleberry, strawberry, blackberry, mulberry, cheekerberry, etc., of which only the first is a berry in the technical sense.
  • noun Technically, a simple fruit in which the entire pericarp is fleshy, excepting the outer skin or epicarp, as the banana, tomato, grape, currant, etc.
  • noun The dry kernel of certain kinds of grain, etc., as the berry of wheat and barley, or the coffee-berry. See cut under wheat.
  • noun Something resembling a berry, as one of the ova or eggs of lobsters, crabs, or other crustaceans, or the drupe of Rhamnus infectorius, used in dyeing.
  • noun A gust of wind.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To bear or produce berries.
  • noun A mound; a hillock.
  • noun Any small fleshy fruit, as the strawberry, mulberry, huckleberry, etc.
  • noun (Bot.) A small fruit that is pulpy or succulent throughout, having seeds loosely imbedded in the pulp, as the currant, grape, blueberry.
  • noun The coffee bean.
  • noun One of the ova or eggs of a fish.
  • noun containing ova or spawn.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small fruit, of any one of many varieties.
  • noun botany A soft fruit which develops from a single ovary and contains seeds not encased in pits.
  • verb To pick berries.
  • noun A mound; a barrow.
  • noun dialectal A burrow, especially a rabbit's burrow.
  • noun An excavation; a military mine.
  • verb transitive To beat; give a beating to; thrash.
  • verb transitive To thresh (grain).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb pick or gather berries
  • noun any of numerous small and pulpy edible fruits; used as desserts or in making jams and jellies and preserves
  • noun United States rock singer (born in 1931)
  • noun a small fruit having any of various structures, e.g., simple (grape or blueberry) or aggregate (blackberry or raspberry)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English berye, from Old English berie; see bhā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English berye, from Old English beriġe, from Proto-Germanic *bazjan (compare German Beere, Danish bær), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰes- ‘to blow, chew, rub’ (compare Tocharian B pās- ‘to whisper’, Albanian fshij ‘to sweep, wipe’, Ancient Greek psāein ‘to rub’, Sanskrit बभस्ति (bábhasti) ‘he chews, devours'). For the semantic development, compare Old Church Slavonic gruša ‘pear’, from grušiti ‘to break, destroy’; Latin pirum ‘pear’, from *peis- ‘to stick, pound’.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English bery ("a burrow"). More at burrow.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English beryen, berien, from Old English *berian (found only in past participle ġebered ("crushed, kneaded, harassed, oppressed, vexed")), from Proto-Germanic *barjanan (“to beat, hit”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- (“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", v).

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Examples

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  • like blackberry, yum

    February 25, 2009