blackberry

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English blakberie,^[2][3] inherited from Old English blæcberie,^[2][4] a compound from Old English blæc (“black”) + berie (“berry”), the ancestors of black and berry;^[5][6][2][7] the fruit is so called for its colour.^[6] In Old English the first element was still inflected as an ordinary adjective.^[5] The OED compares Old High German suarzbere (“bilberry”), probably also the fruit of the bramble, and regional German Schwarzbeere.^[5] Old English also called the fruit bremelberie, from bramble.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The fruit of the bramble: the OED's first record is in the Old English Lacnunga;^[5][7] Bosworth–Toller glosses the Old English word "blackberry, mulberry", for Latin vaccinium and morus.^[4] Etymonline dates the word to the early 12th century.^[6]

Semantic evolution

From late Old English the name was also given to other dark edible berries; in northern English and Scots it could mean the blackcurrant or the bilberry,^[5][7] and in Caithness the crowberry.^[8] The bramble plant itself has been called blackberry since about 1550.^[5][7] Shakespeare's as plentiful as blackberries (1598), for something very common, is now rare.^[5][7] Johnson (1755) quoted Troilus and Cressida for something "not proved worth a blackberry".^[9] The verb blackberry, to gather blackberries, is recorded from 1801 (Merriam-Webster)^[2] or 1877 (OED), after the earlier noun blackberrying;^[5] the Shorter Oxford dates blackberrying to the late 18th century.^[7] Since 1999 BlackBerry has been the trade name of a pager or smartphone,^[5][6][10] and the verb has also meant to send messages with one.^[5] English dialects had compounds such as blackberry summer, a spell of fine weather, and blackberry-moucher, a boy who played truant to gather blackberries.^[8] In American slang blackberry was a derogatory word for a black person, from 1859.^[11]

Timeline

• Old English – the fruit of the bramble.^[5][7]
• late Old English – other dark berries, such as the blackcurrant.^[5]
• c. 1550 – the bramble plant.^[5]
• 1598 – as plentiful as blackberries, in Shakespeare.^[5]
• 1801 – verb, to pick blackberries.^[2]
• 1999 – BlackBerry, a pager or smartphone.^[5][6]
• 2000 – to use a BlackBerry device.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The black or dark purple edible fruit of the bramble, made up of many small drupelets: We picked blackberries along the lane for a pie.^[10][2][5]
2. The thorny plant that bears this fruit, of the genus Rubus.^[10][2][5]
3. BlackBerry (trademark) A brand of smartphone.^[10][5]

Verb

1. To gather blackberries, usually as blackberrying: The children went blackberrying after school.^[2][5]

Word family

• blackberrylike
• blackberry lily

Related words

• bramble
• black
• berry
• raspberry
• dewberry
• mulberry

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com