cranberry

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a small, tart red berry used in sauces, drinks, and baked foods

   She tasted a cranberry before stirring the rest into the sauce.

2. 2
   noun

   a low evergreen shrub of the genus Vaccinium that grows in acidic bogs and bears cranberries

   Each cranberry sends trailing stems across the damp, sandy bed.

Adapted in seventeenth-century American English from Low German Kraanbeere or a related Dutch form, literally 'crane berry,' from kraan, 'crane,' + beere, 'berry.' The name is usually explained by the flower's long, curved parts, which were thought to resemble a crane's neck and bill.

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