a foolish constable in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.
any foolish, blundering, or stupid official.
any of certain plants that have berry-like fruits, such as the European dogwood or the bearberry
the fruit of any of these plants
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The returning midwife, angry at Alyce for ignoring her earlier, set her to do all the least pleasant chores: roasting frogs’ livers, boiling snails into jelly, stripping the thorns from dogberry roses.
From "The Midwife's Apprentice" by Karen Cushman
This abuse may be discovered by opening the berries: those of buckthorn have almost always four seeds; of the alder, two; and of the dogberry, only one.
From A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons Exhibiting the Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine, Spiritous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionery, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, Olive Oil, Pickles, and Other Articles Employed in Domestic Economy by Accum, Friedrich Christian
To make matters worse I drank some dogberry cordial and it chased the catnip tea all over my concourse.
From You Should Worry Says John Henry by McHugh, Hugh
In the evening, as they entered a little thicket of dogberry bushes growing in low land, a small brown shadow flitted across their path.
From The Outcasts by Heming, Arthur Henry Howard
Then Peaches, being a student of natural157 history, insisted that I take some hoarhound, I suppose to bite the dogberry, but it didn't.
From You Should Worry Says John Henry by McHugh, Hugh
In the middle of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s suite of incidental music for “Much Ado About Nothing,” there’s a march meant to accompany Dogberry, Shakespeare’s comic constable, and his fellow watchmen.
From New York Times ● Apr. 14, 2024
Start with this quote from Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing: “Remember that I am an ass.”
From Slate ● Dec. 20, 2013
But any version of this play stands or falls by its Dogberry, the bumbling constable whose logical and verbal pratfalls are their own kind of wisdom.
From New York Times ● Jun. 6, 2013
"If you've ever engaged in an endeavour that made you feel you were doing something right, you felt what we were feeling," says Nathan Fillion, the star of Castle, who plays the part of Dogberry.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 2, 2013
When Mr. Brandon finally sought his bachelor pillow that night, it is regretfully recorded that he, like Dogberry, remembered that he was writ an ass.
From Kitty's Conquest by King, Charles
The local Dogberrys of the tribunals would fire off their little stock of gibes and platitudes upon him, propound with owlish solemnity the new Christianity, abuse him and condemn him, without listening to him.
From All Roads Lead to Calvary by Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
In every old-fashioned town there are models for new Dogberrys and Edie Ochiltrees; our seaports have plenty of Bunsbys; every great city has its Becky Sharpe and Major Pendennis.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 23, September, 1859 by Various
The officers then chosen were Town-Clerks, Assessors, Collectors, and Pathmasters—all of them under the authority and jurisdiction of their Worships, the military and dilapidated Dogberrys in General Quarter Sessions assembled.
From The Last Laird of MacNab An Episode in the Settlement of MacNab Township, Upper Canada by Various
The Dogberrys too are as wise as their ‘illustrious predecessor,’ and are quite as profuse of advice to ‘the plaintiffs’ who fall into their hands.
From The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 Volume 23, Number 2 by Various
At present, the fights are between the apple-women and the dogberries, respecting the legal tenure of stalls: "Bess Hoy first found it troublesome to bawl, And therefore plac'd her cherries on a stall."
From The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 397, November 7, 1829 by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
