# berry

Pronunciation: say "BER-ee" /ˈbɛɹ.i/

## Noun

1. A small, juicy fruit belonging to any one of a great many varieties.
   - Simple: A small, soft, juicy fruit of any of many different kinds.
   - _Birds had stripped every berry from the bushes by the end of September._
   - _Wild berries ripen along the trail in late summer, though some of them are poisonous._
2. In botany, a soft fruit that develops from a single ovary and whose seeds are not enclosed in pits.
   - Simple: In plant science, a soft fruit that grows from one flower's seed case and has seeds but no hard pit.
   - _Botanically speaking, a banana counts as a berry, even though it looks nothing like one._
   - _The textbook classifies grapes, tomatoes, and peppers as true berries, each formed from a single ovary._
3. A coffee bean, one of the beans from which coffee is brewed.
   - Simple: A coffee bean, one of the beans used to make coffee.
   - _He tipped a sack of green berries into the roasting drum, and soon the shop smelled of fresh coffee._
   - _Before grinding the morning's coffee, she picked out every berry that looked cracked or scorched._
5. One of the eggs of a fish or of a crustacean such as a crab.
   - Simple: One of the eggs of a fish, or of a shelled animal like a crab.
   - _Fishermen must return any female lobster in berry to the water._
   - _The female crawfish keeps her berries clean by fanning fresh water over them._

## Verb

4. To pick berries, gathering them from the plants on which they grow.
   - Simple: To pick berries off the plants they grow on.
   - _Every August our neighbors took the kids berrying up on the ridge._
   - _If the weather holds, we'll berry along the old logging road this afternoon._
6. Of a bush, tree, or other plant, to bear or produce berries.
   - Simple: To grow berries, as a bush or other plant does.
   - _Gardeners prune the bushes in late winter so they berry well the following summer._
   - _The rowan by the gate berried so heavily this fall that its branches drooped._

## Proper noun · Berry

7. A former province in the center of France.
   - Simple: An area in the middle of France that used to be a province.
   - _Many villages in Berry still hold on to the customs of the old province._
   - _After two weeks in Paris, they rented a farmhouse in Berry for the rest of the summer._

## Noun

8. A dollar, in American slang that is now dated. *(dated, US)*
   - Simple: A dollar, in American slang that now sounds old-fashioned.
   - _The promoter swore the purse was worth ten thousand berries, and nobody believed him._
   - _She counted out every last berry she owed and slapped it on the bar._

## Other meanings

- (proper noun) A family name of English origin, dating back to the Middle English period.
- (proper noun) A first name for boys or men, taken over from the family name of the same form.
- (noun) A police car, in American slang heard especially in African-American speech.
- (verb) To give someone a beating, striking them again and again.
- (verb) To thresh grain, beating it so that the seeds separate from the straw.
- (noun) A mound, including a barrow heaped up over a grave.
- (noun) A burrow dug by an animal, especially one made by a rabbit.
- (noun) An excavation, including a military mine tunneled beneath an enemy's defenses.
- (proper noun) A first name for girls or women, of English origin.
- (proper noun) A small community in western Alabama, in Fayette County, named after an early settler.
- (proper noun) A small Kentucky city located in Harrison County.
- (proper noun) A rural town in Wisconsin's Dane County, in the American Midwest.
- (proper noun) A rural community in northwestern Quebec, Canada, part of the Abitibi region.
- (proper noun) A small town on the New South Wales south coast in Australia, part of Shoalhaven, named after the landowning Berry brothers.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–6, 8** — From Middle English berye, from Old English berġe, from Proto-West Germanic *baʀi, from Proto-Germanic *bazją. It is related to Saterland Frisian Bäie, West Flemish beier, German Beere, Icelandic ber, and Danish bær. The slang sense 'police car' may come from the lights on the vehicles' roofs.
**Meaning 7** — From French Berry, the name of the province, which goes back to the Bituriges, a Gaulish tribe who lived there before the Roman conquest.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/berry (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).