christmas berry
noun
Simple meaning
Spiny evergreen shrub of southeastern United States having spreading branches usually blue or mauve flowers and red berries.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
krismuhsbehreeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkɹɪsməsˈbɛɹi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Spiny evergreen shrub of southeastern United States having spreading branches usually blue or mauve flowers and red berries
Ornamental evergreen treelike shrub of the Pacific coast of the United States having large white flowers and red berrylike fruits; often placed in genus Photinia
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Spiny evergreen shrub of southeastern United States having spreading branches usually blue or mauve flowers and red berries
Used this way, christmas berry is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.