Beautyberry

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A North American shrub of the genus Callicarpa that produces clusters of bright purple berries in autumn
2. An ornamental woody plant whose tight bunches of vivid violet fruit ripen along its stems late in the year
3. A flowering shrub native to warm regions, valued for the striking clusters of purple berries it bears

Etymology: Beautyberry is a plain compound: "beauty" joined to "berry," and the name describes the shrub's showy clusters of bright purple berries. The berry half is the older and more deeply rooted part. It descends from Old English "berġe," which passed through Middle English "berie" into modern "berry," and it traces back to a Proto-Germanic form that is also the ancestor of the Germanic words for berry across the family. The beauty half has a longer route. It came into English in Middle English as "beaute," borrowed from Anglo-Norman "biauté," which was built from the Latin "bellitātem" (from "bellus," meaning fine or handsome). That Latin base is itself rooted in the Latin word "bellus," and the Vulgar Latin form "bellitātem" shows the same root working through the regular Latin suffix for quality, which English later spelled with the "-ty" ending.