Cherry

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈt͡ʃɛɹi/

Definitions

1. A small stone fruit with red, dark red, or black skin and a single hard pit in the center, or the tree that produces this fruit
2. A sweet or tart red fruit that typically has a single pit inside and comes from the tree of the same name, which is also notable for its flowers in springtime
3. A small edible fruit, usually red or black, containing a hard seed and growing on trees, which are also cultivated for their attractive blossoms

Etymology: The fruit's name travelled a long way before reaching English. Ancient Greek had "kerasos" for the bird cherry tree, and its fruit was "kerasion". Latin borrowed these as "cerasium" and "ceresium", and the Latin word spread across Europe in spoken forms that gave rise to the Old French "cherise". Its origin may lie even further back, since the sound pattern of "kerasos" suggests the word came into Greek from an earlier, non-Greek language of Anatolia, the region of modern Turkey where cherries were likely first grown. English received the word twice. Old English had its own form, "ciris" or "cirse", which came from a Germanic root shared with the ancestors of German, and this survived into Middle English as "chery" and "cherie". Meanwhile, Anglo-Norman speakers used "cherise", and English writers, mistaking its final "s" for a plural ending, eventually dropped that "s" to create the modern singular. The word is a doublet, meaning two forms from the same source that entered a language by different routes. "Cerise", a bright cherry red, came into English from French, and "kirsch", a cherry brandy, came from German. All three trace back to the same Greek root, "kerasos".

Synonyms: red, fruit

Antonyms: green