Berry

How to spell berry

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce berry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does berry mean?

1. nounA small, round, soft, edible fruit that grows on a bush, vine, or bramble.

Berry in a sentence

• She picked a single ripe berry from the bramble and tasted it.

• Each berry on the bush was plump and deep purple by August.

Where does berry come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Berry comes straight from Old English 'berie', the word for a small, round, juicy fruit, and it has stayed remarkably close to that ancient form for well over a thousand years. The root is Germanic, shared with Dutch 'bes' and German 'Beere', all describing edible soft fruits that grow on bushes and brambles. In its earliest use it referred broadly to any such fruit, and that loose botanical sense still survives in everyday names like blackberry, strawberry, and gooseberry, even though some of those are not true berries to a botanist. The double 'r' is the spelling trap: the word is built on a short root with no prefix or suffix, yet writers must remember to double the consonant before the 'y'. It is also a perfect sound-alike for 'bury', so the meaning of the sentence, not the sound, is what tells you which one to write.

How the word is built

• berry (single root, from Old English berie: a small fruit)

Words that sound like berry

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• bury: To place something, especially a dead body, in the ground and cover it, or to hide something from view.