cherries

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of cherry.

   The orchard sold ripe cherries by the pound all summer.

   Birds stripped most of the cherries before we could harvest them.

   Note

   This plural follows the regular spelling rule: a final -y after a consonant becomes -ies, as in berries and ponies. It counts the fruit and the trees that bear it, and also the coffee fruit, so growers speak of picking coffee cherries. The same spelling serves the verb's present-tense form, where it follows a singular subject instead of counting anything.

2. 2
   verbobsolete

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of cherry, in an obsolete sense.

   Note

   The present-tense form of a verb that has fallen out of use. Cherry once meant to redden something or to cheer someone, and it always took an object: the sun cherries the clouds, good news cherries the soldier. It goes with he, she, it or a singular noun. Today it sounds deliberately old-fashioned, and the spelling is far more often the plural of the fruit.

3. 3
   nounBritishcountable

   A track-side device that indicates a gap or break in a railway rail.

   The maintenance crew tested the cherries along the branch line before reopening it to traffic.

   A pair of cherries flagged the fractured rail just south of the station.

   Note

   A piece of British railway jargon that gives the fruit's name to a working device, the rail-gap indicator, which marks where the running rail is broken. It belongs to track and maintenance talk in Britain, and most readers outside that world will picture fruit. In general writing, use rail-gap indicator and keep cherries for conversation among railway staff.

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