Huckleberry
noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A small round fruit of a dark blue or red color, of several plants in the related genera Vaccinium and Gaylussacia.
"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 blue-black berry similar to blueberries and bilberries of the eastern United States wordnet
- 3 A shrub growing this fruit.
- 4 any of several shrubs of the genus Gaylussacia bearing small berries resembling blueberries wordnet
- 5 A small amount, a short distance, as in the phrase huckleberry above a persimmon.
"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.”"
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- 6 any of various dark-fruited as distinguished from blue-fruited blueberries wordnet
- 7 A person of little consequence. slang
- 8 The person one is looking for; the right person for the job. US, slang
"I'm your huckleberry."
- 1 To pick huckleberries. intransitive
Example
More examples"One of my favorite sentences in the book "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is: "I could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway.""
Etymology
Probably an alteration of Middle English hurtilbery (“whortleberry”). American English from 1660s.