huckleberry

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word huckleberry. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word huckleberry, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say huckleberry in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word huckleberry you have here. The definition of the word huckleberry will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofhuckleberry, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

English

Vaccinium ovatum, known as evergreen huckleberry, winter huckleberry or California huckleberry
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Etymology

Probably an alteration of Middle English hurtilbery (whortleberry). American English from 1660s.[1]

Pronunciation

Noun

huckleberry (plural huckleberries)

  1. A small round fruit of a dark blue or red color of several plants in the related genera Vaccinium and Gaylussacia.
    • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
      I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.
  2. A shrub growing this fruit.
  3. A small amount, a short distance, as in the phrase huckleberry above a persimmon.
    • 1967, Richard Boyd Hauck, The Literary Content of the New York Spirit of the Times, 1831-1856, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, page 88:
      Porter preferred prose to poetry. Prose seemed to him to be a concrete, practical form of expression. But poetry, as he informed a poet who signed his name “Evergreen,” was “a huckleberry beyond us.”
  4. (slang) A person of little consequence.
  5. (US, slang) The person one is looking for; the right person for the job.
    I'm your huckleberry.

Usage notes

While some Vaccinium species, such as Vaccinium parvifolium, the red huckleberry, are always called huckleberries, other species may be called blueberries or huckleberries depending upon local custom. Usually, the distinction between them is that blueberries are white on the inside in most cases compared to huckleberries which vary from red to purple inside with a couple dozen tiny seeds.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

huckleberry (third-person singular simple present huckleberries, present participle huckleberrying, simple past and past participle huckleberried)

  1. (intransitive) To pick huckleberries.

See also

References

  1. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “huckleberry”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.