Cherry
nounA small, round, usually red stone fruit, or the tree that produces it.
How to spell cherry
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce cherry
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does cherry mean?
- nounA small, round, usually red stone fruit, or the tree that produces it.
- adjectiveOf a deep, bright red colour, like that of a ripe cherry.
Cherry in a sentence
-
noun
She picked a ripe cherry from the bowl on the table.
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adjective
She painted the front door a glossy cherry red.
-
noun
The garden has one old cherry tree that blossoms each spring.
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adjective
He bought a cherry coloured sports car.
Where does cherry come from?
Language of origin: French
The word cherry has an unusual history rooted in a grammatical misunderstanding. It descends from the Old North French cherise, which itself came from the Latin cerasum, the name for the cherry fruit, and ultimately from the Greek kerasos, meaning the cherry tree. When the word entered Middle English in the 1300s, speakers heard the final 's' of cherise as a plural marker, just as 'peas' once gave rise to a false singular 'pea'. They therefore trimmed it back to a supposed singular form, cheri, which settled into modern cherry. The Greek kerasos is sometimes linked to the city of Cerasus on the Black Sea coast, from which the Romans were said to have brought the fruit. That tangled journey explains why the spelling keeps the double 'r' and the soft 'ch' rather than the original 's' sound.
How the word is built
- cherr- (from Old French cherise, reinterpreted as a singular)
- -y (noun ending)
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