# berry

/ˈbɛɹi/ (US) · /bˈɛɹi/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/berry
Updated: 2026-08-15

## Senses

### 1. small fruit

noun · CEFR A2

a small, soft, juicy fruit that you can eat, like a strawberry or blueberry.

For teachers: a small, succulent fruit of any variety, typically edible and growing on a bush or herbaceous plant.

- We picked a bowl of fresh berries from the garden for breakfast.
- The hikers spent the afternoon gathering wild berries, being careful to avoid the varieties known to be toxic to humans.

### 2. botanical definition

noun · CEFR C1 · Technical

the scientific name for a fruit that grows from one flower part and has seeds inside.

For teachers: a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary, where the entire outer layer of the ovary wall ripens into a potentially edible pericarp.

- Did you know that a banana is technically a berry but a strawberry is not?
- In botanical terms, the tomato is classified as a berry because it develops from a single ovary and contains multiple seeds within its pulp.

### 3. coffee bean

noun · CEFR C2 · Technical

a name sometimes used for a coffee bean before it is roasted.

For teachers: a term used within the coffee industry to refer to the fruit or the seed of the coffee plant.

- The quality of the coffee depends on how the berries are harvested.
- The pickers carefully selected only the deep red berries, ensuring that the resulting coffee would have a superior flavour profile.

### 4. to pick fruit

verb · CEFR B2

to go out and look for berries to pick and eat.

For teachers: to gather or harvest berries from the wild or a cultivated area.

- Every summer, the family goes berrying in the hills behind their house.
- They spent the entire weekend berrying, eventually returning with enough fruit to make several dozen jars of preserves.

## Examples

- I like to put a fresh berry on my yogurt every morning.
- We spent the entire afternoon picking every ripe berry we could find along the garden fence.
- While the culinary definition includes various small fruits, the botanical classification of a berry requires the fruit to be fleshy throughout, excluding many common drupes and aggregate fruits.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.