Cranberry

How to spell cranberry

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce cranberry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cranberry mean?

1. nounA small, tart red berry that grows on a low bog shrub, often made into sauce or juice.

Cranberry in a sentence

• The roast turkey was served with a spoonful of cranberry sauce.

• She stirred a glass of sparkling water with a splash of cranberry juice.

Where does cranberry come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Cranberry is a compound that joins the bird name crane with the ancient English word berry. The fruit's name is thought to come from Low German or Dutch settlers, who called it something like 'kraanbere', literally 'crane berry'. The most popular explanation is that the plant's slender stems and pink, drooping blossoms reminded people of the head and neck of a crane, the long-legged wading bird that frequents the same boggy ground where the berries grow. English picked up the word in the seventeenth century, largely in North America, where the native bog fruit was abundant and important to colonial diet. The 'berry' half is genuinely old, a native Germanic word for a small soft fruit that also gives us blackberry and strawberry, which is why the spelling keeps the doubled 'r' before the '-y' ending.

How the word is built

• cran- (from crane, the bird)
• berry (native English fruit element)