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  1. huckleberry love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Any of various New World shrubs of the genus Gaylussacia, related to the blueberries and bearing edible fruit.
  2. n. The glossy, blackish, many-seeded berry of these plants.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A name for the different species of Gaylussacia, and for some of the species of Vaccinium, belonging to the natural order Vacciniaceæ, as also for their fruit. The name is properly restricted to the species of Gaylussacia. They are shrubs with either evergreen or deciduous alternate leaves, commonly glandular or resin-bearing; flowers in lateral racemes, from separate scaly buds, with tubular reddish- or greenish-white corolla; calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, which in fruit becomes drupaceous, crowned with the calyx-lobes, 10-celled, with 10 seed-like nutlets. G. resinosa is the common high-bush huckleberry or black huckleberry of the markets; G. frondosa is the bluetangle or blue huckleberry; G. ursina of North and South Carolina is the bear-huckleberry. For the huckleberries of the genus Vaccinium, see blueberry, their more appropriate name. V. corymbosum is also called the blue huckleberry, and V. Pennsylvanicum the sugar-huckleberry or low-bush huckleberry. Also called whortleberry, hurtleberry.
  2. n. Gaylussacia hirtella, a true huckleberry, related to the dwarf huckleberry, but with the young parts and even the fruit hispid. It is found along the lower Atlantic and the Gulf coasts of the United States.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A small round fruit of a dark blue or red color of several plants in the related genera Vaccinium and Gaylussacia.
  2. n. A shrub growing this fruit.
  3. n. idiomatic A small amount, as in the phrase huckleberry above a persimmon.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. The edible black or dark blue fruit of several species of the American genus Gaylussacia, shrubs nearly related to the blueberries (Vaccinium), and formerly confused with them. The commonest huckelberry comes from Gaylussacia resinosa.
  2. n. The shrub that bears the berries. Called also whortleberry.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. blue-black berry similar to blueberries and bilberries of the eastern United States
  2. n. any of several shrubs of the genus Gaylussacia bearing small berries resembling blueberries
  3. n. any of various dark-fruited as distinguished from blue-fruited blueberries

Etymologies

  1. Probably alteration of hurtleberry, whortleberry; see whortleberry. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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hypernyms (3)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. berry
  1. blueberry bush
  1. blueberry

same context (19)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. whortleberry
  2. gooseberry
  3. steak-and-kidney
  1. nut tree
  2. lantana
  3. blueberry
  1. syringa
  2. black currant
  3. brambly
  1. elderberry
  2. blackberry
  3. crab apple
  1. heathery
  2. nectarine
  3. beefsteak
  1. pokeberry
  2. briar
  3. azalea
  1. mezcla

reverse dictionary (24)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. dangleberry
  2. gaylussacia frondosa
  3. huckleberry
  4. sugar-huckleberry
  1. hurtleberry
  2. whortleberry
  3. gooseberry
  4. squaw-huckleberry
  1. deerberry
  2. berry
  3. buckberry
  4. blue tangle
  1. cowberry
  2. hurt
  3. Clemens
  4. quercus vaccinifolia
  1. samuel langhorne clemens
  2. pariah
  3. huckleberry oak
  4. mark twain
  1. blueberry
  2. pyrene
  3. leatherwood
  4. ohelo

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Comments

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  • chained_bear Or this one. (turn sound up—SFW) Jan 22, 2009

  • reesetee Huckleberry Hound! :-D Jan 19, 2009

  • skipvia Don't forget this guy. Jan 19, 2009

  • reesetee I've been trying to make time to reread it. Quite a book. Jan 19, 2009

  • rolig Now there's a book that for some sad reason I have never gotten around to reading. I probably watch too much TV. Jan 19, 2009

  • reesetee Rolig, Ignatius J Reilly is the central character in the delightful A Confederacy of Dunces. :-) Jan 19, 2009

  • rolig I don't believe I've read I.J. Reilly, but Huckleberry Finn is delightful. I strongly recommend reading it. Jan 19, 2009

  • garyth123 I've never read HF. (Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate. Ignatius J Reilly:) Jan 18, 2009

  • rolig The song is about being "drifters off to see the world." In Mark Twain's novel, Huckleberry and Jim run away from home and travel down the Mississippi on a raft, and a number of entertaining adventures ensue. So in the song, "huckleberry" means "free-spirited, adventurous, open to new things, exploring the world". Jan 18, 2009

  • garyth123 Ah I see. I couldn't really make sense of it. (Actually even with the knowledge that it's a reference to HF I still don't get it.) Jan 18, 2009

  • rolig In "Moon River", it's a reference to Huckleberry Finn. Jan 18, 2009

  • garyth123 This word occurs in the song Moon River.

    Moon River. Jan 18, 2009

  • avivamagnolia Gullible Gulls, Huckleberry, Jumbi, Wooden Nickels, Realtors, and Calling a Spade a Spade

    Dear Evan: I recently ran into the phrase "I'm your huckleberry" in a story about the Old West. Looking up the term in a dictionary, I found that in slang it meant "special man for the job" around 1880, but is now considered archaic...

    ...According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, "huckleberry" meant, as you've discovered, "the desired or suitable person" for a task, or just an all-around nice person or even "sweetheart."

    But "huckleberry" could also mean "a small amount or distance" or even "a negligible thing or person." In fact, Twain himself used the word in this less than flattering sense in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" in 1889.

    As a handy metaphor for something very small, the huckleberry also appeared in phrases such as "to bet a huckleberry to a persimmon" (a very small bet) and "a huckleberry above a persimmon" (a very small amount). But, though small, huckleberries could be special, too, as in the phrase "the only huckleberry on the bush," signifying something unique.

    Ironically, amid all this evidence of turn-of-the-century huckleberry madness, we find evidence that the humble huckleberry actually got its name from a simple mistake. Early American colonists, upon encountering the native American berry, misidentified it as the European blueberry known as the "hurtleberry," by which name it was called until, through generations of slightly sloppy pronunciation, it became known as the "huckleberry."

    Huckleberry, from The Word Detective
    Jan 18, 2009

  • avivamagnolia (Science: botany) The edible black or dark blue fruit of several species of the American genus Gaylussacia, shrubs nearly related to the blueberries (Vaccinium), and formerly confused with them. The commonest huckelberry comes from g. Resinosa.

    The shrub that bears the berries.

    Synonym: whortleberry. Squaw huckleberry. See Deeberry. Jan 18, 2009

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‘huckleberry’ has been looked up 7603 times, added to 17 lists, commented on 14 times, and has a Scrabble score of 25.