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I've just picked, and eaten, a ripe bramble.

Incidentally: spikey thorny bushes are called brambles. The fruits that grow on them are called brambles, also known as blackberries.

Or so I think. One of our sysadmins at work insists that only the bushes are called brambles - to the extent of being adamant that bramble jelly is made from the leaves and the shoot-tips. He's clearly insane.

However. How common is it to call the fruits brambles ? Would you do it ?

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From:

chrisvenus

Never called the fruit brambles in my life. being intrigued I went to www.dict.org (no access to OED unfortunately) and the definition said "Any plant of the genus Rubus, including the raspberry and blackberry." so that implies that you're totally wrong (in that brambles aren't just blackberries). Of course that might not be a great definition so I'll wait for a decent OED one before going on. It does kind of agree with what I thought though that brambles are just spiky git plants. )

From:

venta.livejournal.com

I've just looked at a couple of on-line dictionaries too, and it seems you and

floralaetifica are right according to them.

I've honestly never heard anyone call a raspberry cane a bramble before now.

From:

wimble.livejournal.com

1. A rough prickly shrub; spec. the blackberry-bush (Rubus fruticosus).

So glad that doesn't clear anything up ;-)

From:

onebyone.livejournal.com

It's worth pointing out that the OED (or any dictionary) is a bad place to look for specialist terminology.

In particular, it doesn't do very well in cases like this might be, where a term is used frequently for a single species or small group of species, and less frequently for a wider class. For instance, compare a dictionary with a bird-watching guide.

From:

venta.livejournal.com

I also wasn't querying what the word meant (well, it turns out I was, as I didn't realise you could use "bramble" for raspberry canes and loganberry hatstands as well).

I accept that all these definitions are valid, I just wanted to know how commonly people used them.

wimble, could the OED start including usage stats, please ?