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Help[Facts] Looked Huckleberry up on Dictionary.com
in reply to a message by Uyulala
Huckleberry is apparently an alteration of hurtleberry, of which whortleberry is a variant.
Whortleberry/hurtleberry comes from Middle English hurtilberi. Hurtilberi's an alteration of the combination of Old English hurt "an azure-coloured ball" (from Old French heurte) and berye, beri "berry". This makes perfect sense, since huckleberries are indeed blue-coloured and more-or-less ball-shaped: http://snipurl.com/bknl.
Going deeper (because I just can't help myself!), berye is Middle English, and derives from Old English berie. Berie derives from an Indo-European root, bh-.
Dictionary.com didn't provide what bh- means, so I looked it up in the online American Heritage Dictionary (http://snipurl.com/bknk): it's a contraction of bhe- "coloured"; when it became bh-, it had its meaning altered to "to shine".
Derivations of bh- include Germanic bazja- "berry" ("bright coloured fruit"), the aforementioned Old English berie and berige "berry", Old High German beri "berry", and Old French framboise "raspberry" (alteration of Frankish brm-besi "bramble berry").
Whew! Etymologic sources: http://snipurl.com/bkni (Dictionary.com "huckleberry"), http://snipurl.com/bknj (AHD "bh-").
Miranda
EDIT: + Missing period, "sources" -> "etymologic sources"
Whortleberry/hurtleberry comes from Middle English hurtilberi. Hurtilberi's an alteration of the combination of Old English hurt "an azure-coloured ball" (from Old French heurte) and berye, beri "berry". This makes perfect sense, since huckleberries are indeed blue-coloured and more-or-less ball-shaped: http://snipurl.com/bknl.
Going deeper (because I just can't help myself!), berye is Middle English, and derives from Old English berie. Berie derives from an Indo-European root, bh-.
Dictionary.com didn't provide what bh- means, so I looked it up in the online American Heritage Dictionary (http://snipurl.com/bknk): it's a contraction of bhe- "coloured"; when it became bh-, it had its meaning altered to "to shine".
Derivations of bh- include Germanic bazja- "berry" ("bright coloured fruit"), the aforementioned Old English berie and berige "berry", Old High German beri "berry", and Old French framboise "raspberry" (alteration of Frankish brm-besi "bramble berry").
Whew! Etymologic sources: http://snipurl.com/bkni (Dictionary.com "huckleberry"), http://snipurl.com/bknj (AHD "bh-").
Miranda
EDIT: + Missing period, "sources" -> "etymologic sources"
This message was edited 12/24/2004, 5:16 AM
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