Dogberry
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The berry of the dogwood.
- 2 A pompous, foolish or self-important official.
"It would be interesting to know how many village Dogberries there were like Thomas Law, the constable of Quendon, Essex, whose reaction in 1651 on being informed of a robbery was to call on the astrologer, William Hills, ‘with an intent to hear what he might say, so that he might make his search accordingly’."
- 3 Clintonia borealis (yellow clintonia)
Example
More examples"It would be interesting to know how many village Dogberries there were like Thomas Law, the constable of Quendon, Essex, whose reaction in 1651 on being informed of a robbery was to call on the astrologer, William Hills, ‘with an intent to hear what he might say, so that he might make his search accordingly’."
Etymology
See dogwood and berry. Compare also dog rose. Compare German Hundbeere (“bittersweet”), Ancient Greek κυνόσβατος (kunósbatos, “evergreen rose”), Lithuanian šùnobelė (“buckthorn”), Italian mela canina (“mandrake”).
From Dogberry, the name of a character in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1600).
Related phrases
More for "dogberry"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.