Sherry

How to spell sherry

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sherry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sherry mean?

1. nounA fortified wine, originally from the Jerez region of Spain, drunk before or after a meal.

Sherry in a sentence

• She poured a small glass of sherry before dinner.

• The recipe calls for a splash of dry sherry in the sauce.

Where does sherry come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

Sherry takes its name from Jerez de la Frontera, a town in the Andalusia region of southern Spain, long famous for its fortified wine. The Spanish wine was originally called vino de Xeres, meaning 'wine of Xeres', Xeres being the old spelling of Jerez. English drinkers borrowed the name in the late sixteenth century as 'sherris', and because that word sounded like a plural ending in 's', they trimmed it down to a supposed singular, 'sherry', through a misunderstanding known as back-formation. The same drink was earlier sold under the name 'sack', and Shakespeare's Falstaff praises 'sherris-sack' in Henry IV, preserving the older form. The unusual spelling is really a fossil of a Spanish town name filtered through an English ear, which is why it looks nothing like an ordinary English word.

How the word is built

• sherry (from sherris, an English reshaping of the Spanish place name Jerez)