Small, round, typically red fruits with pits, growing on cherry trees. Also used metaphorically to refer to virginity or as a symbol of perfection.
From Old French 'cherise', mistakenly treated as plural and back-formed to 'cherry' in Middle English. Originally from Greek 'kerasion', named after the city Kerasos (modern-day Giresun, Turkey).
The word 'cherries' is a linguistic accident - medieval English speakers heard the French 'cherise' and assumed it was already plural, creating the singular 'cherry' through back-formation. This mistake gave us one of our most beloved fruit names, proving that linguistic errors can sometimes create beautiful results.
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