elderberry

1. 1.

   a common shrub with black fruit or a small tree of Europe and Asia; fruit used for wines and jellies

   Synonymsbourtreeblack eldercommon elderEuropean elderSambucus nigra

   Broaderelder
2. 2.

   berrylike fruit of an elder used for e.g. wines and jellies

   Broaderedible fruitdrupe

   Part ofAmerican elder

Other forms of elderberry

plural

elderberries·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about elderberry

What does elderberry mean?

elderberry means "a common shrub with black fruit or a small tree of Europe and Asia; fruit used for wines and jellies". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in elderberry?

elderberry has 4 syllables: el-der-ber-ry. The stress falls on "der".

What is another word for elderberry?

Close synonyms include bourtree, black elder, common elder, European elder, Sambucus nigra. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is elderberry a common word?

elderberry is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.