Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A berry of the service-tree.
- noun The fruit of the whitebeam, Pyrus Aria.
- noun A North American shrub or small tree, Amelanchier Canadensis, or its berry-like subacid fruit; the shad-bush or June-berry. The name extends to the other species of the genus, especially the western A. alnifolia.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Then Sun created beautiful service-berry bushes which stood beside the trail.
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Beside the cottonwoods and the willows there was an occasional wild-cherry tree; in the shrubs were the service-berry, and the squaw-berry, with sticky, acid-tasting fruit.
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In August they gather the choke-berry and service-berry, to dry for the winter.
Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California Caroline C. Leighton
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In the more open places grew buck-brush and the service-berry, Oregon grape with its holly-shaped leaves, blue lupines, Indian paint-brush and great mountain ferns.
Virginia of Elk Creek Valley Mary Ellen Chase 1930
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I saw all the different shrubs -- quaking-asp and buck-brush and Oregon grape and service-berry and hawthorn and wild currant -- and I thought to myself that this would be some garden in September.
Virginia of Elk Creek Valley Mary Ellen Chase 1930
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To her right rose the mountain wall, dark with pine and spruce, though here and there a flaming service-berry or a hawthorn broke through the evergreens like sudden fire.
Virginia of Elk Creek Valley Mary Ellen Chase 1930
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The violets still made purple blotches along the bank of the noisy stream, the thorn trees and the service-berry bushes were still like fragrant banks of snow, the grass in the valley was as green and the picture as serenely beautiful as when first he had stopped to gaze upon it, but it no longer looked like paradise to Dick Kincaid.
The Lady Doc Caroline Lockhart 1916
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The thorn bushes were white with blossoms and the service-berry bushes were like fragrant banks of snow.
The Lady Doc Caroline Lockhart 1916
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They never came any more, neither they nor the black bear to his service-berry bush and Old Felix had learned in one bitter lesson how his confidence in man had been misplaced.
The Man from the Bitter Roots Caroline Lockhart 1916
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Near these grows plentifully a shrub which produces a fruit called by the mountaineers service-berry, of a dark blue, the size of a small grape, and of very pleasant flavor.
chained_bear commented on the word service-berry
a.k.a. "service-apple." (a) the fruit of the Service (Pyrus domestica); (b) a N. American tree or shrub of the genus Amelanchier, belonging to the family Rosaceæ and bearing clusters of white flowers followed by small, dark-coloured berries; also, the fruit of this tree or shrub; (c) the fruit of the white-beam, Pyrus Aria (Cent. Dict.). (OED online)
February 5, 2007