blackberry

Etymology

From Middle English blakberie, blakeberie (“brambleberry”), from Old English blacu berġe, blæcberġe (attested in plural blaca berġan, equivalent to black + berry.

noun

1. A fruit-bearing shrub of the aggregate species Rubus fruticosus and some hybrids.
2. The soft fruit borne by this shrub, formed of a black (when ripe) cluster of drupelets.
3. (UK, dialectal) The blackcurrant.

verb

1. To gather or forage for blackberries.
   She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun 1925, Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
   My mother and Cordelia were blackberrying along the woods edge of a nearby meadow. 1977, Howard Frank Mosher, Disappearances, Mariner Books, published 2006, page 111
   Thereafter we blackberried unceasingly and returned with a large basketful, together with some maggoty windfall apples found neglected in the wet grass on the edge of an orchard and Mrs Clare duly stewed these for us. 1988, Arthur Bryson Gerrard, Butterflies & coalsmoke, page 62
   My wife and children were blackberrying at the end of the garden and I was simply reading. 2001, Thomas Keneally, Victim of the Aurora, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published 2001, page 72
   Another instance of someone who is blackberrying and sees fairies can be found at Kingheriot Farm (South-West Wales: Pembrokeshire): maybe gathering berries puts the percipient into a relaxed or dissociated frame of mind, more conducive to being able to see things that one would perhaps not normally be able to see. 2004, Janet Bord, The Traveller's Guide to Fairy Sites: The Landscape and Folklore of Fairyland In England, Wales And Scotland, Gothic Image, published 2004, page 48