Whimberry
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The bilberry or whortleberry (Vaccinium myrtillus). dialectal
"Another variable species: when fed upon whimberry or cowberry it is a most distinct-looking insect, often with the white patches placed in a triangle, one on the disk, one on the hind margin, and the usual one: no band."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Another variable species: when fed upon whimberry or cowberry it is a most distinct-looking insect, often with the white patches placed in a triangle, one on the disk, one on the hind margin, and the usual one: no band."
Etymology
From earlier winberry, apparently a variant of wineberry (Middle English winberie) with regular shortening of the first vowel before a consonant cluster; in wineberry, this was prevented or reversed due to analogy. The assimilation of /nb/ to /mb/ seen in some forms is to be expected (compare hemp < Old English henep). Other forms show the influence of unrelated words; the consonantism of forms with initial wh- is probably due to the influence of whin, while windberry clearly represents remodelling as wind + berry.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.