blackberry

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.

   “Here at the creek, a ways off from the trail, we have blackberries for now, not as fat and sweet as they get, but I like them tart, with that little bit of red still at their tops, or if they’re just a little hard and not so soft they come off when you pull at them and leave your fingers stained.”

3. (broadly, informal)Any Rubus berry that is black or blackish; the plant that produces it.
4. (UK, dialectal)The blackcurrant.
5. A wireless handheld device, a cross between a cellphone and a mobile email appliance and Internet-capable PDA, marketed by BlackBerry Limited.

   “Knowing that DA, Inc. was using BlackBerrys, the CEO of the competition hired an underground hacker to come up with a way to thwart the competition.”

   “A few days ago, I took a walk with my wife and did not take my BlackBerry! That's progress. Of course, I reached into my empty pockets six or seven times, so clearly I have a long way to go.”

   “Posers using BlackBerrys on the button lift can be pretty irritating, but I bet it gives a lot of pleasure whenever an unfortunate captain of industry drops his vital little device in the snow.”

   “Thugga and the rest of the group communicated using BlackBerrys set up so that messages would automatically delete after 48 hours.”

verb

1. To gather or forage for blackberries.

   “She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun”

   “My mother and Cordelia were blackberrying along the woods edge of a nearby meadow.”

   “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.”

   “My wife and children were blackberrying at the end of the garden and I was simply reading.”

   “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.”

2. To send a text message or e-mail with a BlackBerry device.

   “"I BlackBerried a sort of risque joke message to this friend of mine — it was totally a joke — but, um, I accidentally sent it to two hundred strangers. […]”

   “We've interviewed female entrepreneurs who say they were BlackBerrying up into the final stages of labor; […]”

   “But Revenue Commissioner Pat Galvin told me she was well known for BlackBerrying during face-to-face meetings.”