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)

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

   Synonyms: bramble, brambleberry

   Hypernym: berry

   Coordinate term: black raspberry

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

   Synonyms: bramble, brambleberry

   Hypernyms: berry < fruit

   Coordinate term: black raspberry

   • 2024, Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars, Harvill Secker, page 79:

     Here at the creek, a ways off from the trail, we have blackberries for now, not as fat and sweet as they get, but I like them tart, with that little bit of red still at their tops, or if they’re just a little hard and not so soft they come off when you pull at them and leave your fingers stained.

6. (loosely, informal) Any Rubus berry that is black or blackish; the plant that produces it.
7. (UK, dialectal) The blackcurrant.

The loosest Rubus-referent sense (sense 3) is used only informally, by speakers who are botanical and horticultural laypersons. This sense views Rubus fruticosus, Rubus occidentalis, and Rubus leucodermis as merely different kinds of blackberry.

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