Hurtleberry

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A low woody shrub of the heath family that bears small, dark blue, edible berries, also called a bilberry or whortleberry
2. The name for a small heath plant whose tart, blue-black berries grow on low, twiggy stems in northern woodlands and moors
3. A dwarf shrub native to cool northern regions, producing dark, sweet-tart berries that are gathered for eating and for making jams

Etymology: Hurtleberry is a variant of "whortleberry," the name for the small dark berry of the bilberry shrub. The Middle English form "hurtil-beri" combined "hurtil," the name of the plant, with "beri," meaning berry, and the plant name appears in Old English as "horte." Those older forms point to a plant name that was already in use long before the modern spelling settled, though the word behind it has no known origin. The surprising part is how little is certain about the first syllable. Scholars can trace the Old English "horte" and the Middle English "horten" and "hurten," but they cannot say where those forms came from. Nothing in the record connects them to a clearer root, so the plant name survives as an unexplained relic of older English.

Synonyms: whortleberry, bilberry, huckleberry