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Concept
Gooseberry
Summary
Gooseberry (ˈɡuːsbɛri or ˈɡuːzbɛri (American and northern British) or ˈɡʊzbəri (southern British)) is a common name for many species of Ribes (which also includes currants), as well as a large number of plants of similar appearance. The berries of those in the genus Ribes (sometimes placed in the genus Grossularia) are edible and may be green, orange, red, purple, yellow, white, or black.
The goose in gooseberry has been mistakenly seen as a corruption of either the Dutch word kruisbes or the allied German Krausbeere, or of the earlier forms of the French groseille. Alternatively, the word has been connected to the Middle High German krus ('curl, crisped'), in Latin as grossularia. However, the Oxford English Dictionary takes the more literal derivation from goose and berry as probable because "the grounds on which plants and fruits have received names associating them with animals are so often inexplicable that the inappropriateness in the meaning does not necessarily give good grounds for believing that the word is an etymological corruption". The French for gooseberry is groseille à maquereau, translated as 'mackerel berries', due to their use in a sauce for mackerel in old French cuisine. In Britain, gooseberries may informally be called goosegogs.
Gooseberry bush was 19th-century slang for pubic hair, and from this comes the saying that babies are "born under a gooseberry bush".
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Gooseberry growing was popular in 19th-century Britain. The 1879 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica described gooseberries thus:
The gooseberry is indigenous to many parts of Europe and western Asia, growing naturally in alpine thickets and rocky woods in the lower country, from France eastward, well into the Himalayas and peninsular India.
In Britain, it is often found in copses and hedgerows and about old ruins, but the gooseberry has been cultivated for so long that it is difficult to distinguish wild bushes from feral ones, or to determine where the gooseberry fits into the native flora of the island.
Official source
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