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''blackberry'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260202202216-00-⌔

blackberry - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

blackberry (plural blackberries)

  • A fruit - bearing shrub of the aggregate species Rubus fruticosus and some hybrids.
    • ✤ Synonyms: bramble, brambleberry
    • ✤ Hypernym: berry
    • ✤ Coordinate term: black raspberry
  • 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
    • ✤ 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.1
  • (loosely, informal) Any Rubus berry that is black or blackish; the plant that produces it.
  • (UK, dialectal) The blackcurrant.

Verb

blackberry (third-person singular simple present blackberries, present participle blackberrying, simple past and past participle blackberried)

  • To gather or forage for blackberries.
    • ✤ She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun2
    • ✤ My mother and Cordelia were blackberrying along the woods edge of a nearby meadow.3
    • ✤ 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.4
    • ✤ My wife and children were blackberrying at the end of the garden and I was simply reading.5
    • ✤ 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.6

Etymology

From Middle English blakberie, blakeberie (“brambleberry”), from Old English blacu berġe, blæcberġe (attested in plural blaca berġan), equivalent to black +‎ berry.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /ˈblækbəɹi/, /ˈblækbɹi/
  • (US) IPA: /ˈblækbɛɹi/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 2024, Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars, Harvill Secker, page 79: ↩

  2. 1925, Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway: ↩

  3. 1977, Howard Frank Mosher, Disappearances, Mariner Books, published 2006, →ISBN, page 111: ↩

  4. 1988, Arthur Bryson Gerrard, Butterflies & coalsmoke, page 62: ↩

  5. 2001, Thomas Keneally, Victim of the Aurora, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published 2001, →ISBN, page 72: ↩

  6. 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: ↩

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