blackberry
(ˈblækbɛrɪ)
1. The fruit of the bramble (Rubus fruticosus) and its varieties. This being almost the commonest wild fruit in England is spoken of proverbially as the type of what is plentiful and little prized.
| c 1000 ælfric Gloss. in Wr.-Wülcker Voc. 139 Flaui, uel mori, blaceberian. c 1250 Gloss. ibid. 558 Murum, blakeberie. c 1350 Will. Palerne 1809 Blake-beries þat on breres growen. a 1420 Hoccleve De Reg. Princ. 4715 He settethe not therby a blakberie. 1555 Eden Decades W. Ind. iii. viii. (Arb.) 172 Bramble busshes bearynge blacke berries or wylde raspes. 1596 Shakes. 1 Hen. IV, ii. iv. 265 If Reasons were as plentie as Black-berries, I would giue no man a Reason vpon compulsion. 1713 Gay Past. vi, Blackberries they pluck'd in deserts wild. 1852 Gard. Chron. 3 A real novelty..in the form of what is called a White Blackberry. |
b. attrib.
| 1578 Lyte Dodoens vi. iv. 661 The Bramble or Blacke berie bushe. 1580 Baret Alv. B 1111 Bramble, the blacke bery tree. 1846 Sowerby Brit. Bot. (1864) III. 164 Who..has not in his day, been a Blackberry-gatherer? 1847 Halliwell Dict., Blackberry summer, the fine weather..at the latter end of September and the beginning of October, when the blackberries ripen. Hants. 1880 Besant & Rice Seamy Side xxiii. 290 ‘Real jam, blackberry-jam.’ |
2. The trailing shrub which bears this fruit; the bramble.
| 1579 Langham Gard. Health (1633), Bramble breer or Blackberry. 1688 R. Holme Acad. Armorie ii. 119 Spinous or thorny shrubs..Bramble, Blackberry, Rose. 1849 M. Somerville Phys. Geog. II. xxvi. 163 Of the seven species of bramble which grow at the Cape, one is the Common English bramble or blackberry. |
3. Now, in the north of England and south of Scotland, the Black Currant (Ribes nigrum), the ‘blackberry’ of sense 1 being there called ‘Brambleberry’; formerly in some localities the Bilberry, or Blaeberry; also, according to some, but perhaps erroneously, the sloe or fruit of the Blackthorn.
| 1567 J. Maplet Gr. Forest, The blackberie tree is after his sort bushy bearing that fruite that eftsones refresheth the Shepherde. 1597 Gerard Herbal (1633) 1417 We in England [call them] Worts, Whortleberries, Black-berries, Bill⁓berries. 1721 Bailey, Black-berries..the Berries of the Black-thorn. 1783 Ainsworth Lat. Dict. (Morell) ii. Vaccinium, a blackberry, as some say. 1852 Gard. Chron. 54 In speaking of blackberries about Kelso, black currants are understood. 1885 Scot. Border Rec. 6 June, The red currant and blackberries have suffered somewhat. |