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PlainSpell

serviceberry

noun

serviceberry is a noun meaning “Several species of trees in the genus Sorbus, especially Sorbus domestica and Sorbus torminalis” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-E-R-V-I-C-E-B-E-R-R-Y, and it appears about once in every 50 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of serviceberry is serviceberries.

What does serviceberry mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Several species of trees in the genus Sorbus, especially Sorbus domestica and Sorbus torminalis.

  2. 2

    The berries of those trees

  3. 3

    CanadaUSAny plant of the genus Amelanchier of small deciduous trees and large shrubs in the family Rosaceae.

  4. 4

    CanadaUSThe berry of such a plant.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce serviceberry?

  • US

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-serviceberry.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of serviceberry

  • serviceberries plural
  • service-berry
  • service berry

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is serviceberry?

Serviceberry appears about once in every 50 million words in written English, the 220,118th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Serviceberry in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchamélanchier (Amelanchier), amélanche (berry of Amelanchier)
GermanFelsenbirne (Amelanchier)
Portugueseamelanqueiro (Amelanchier)
Spanishguillomo (Amelanchier)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does serviceberry come from?

Compound of service (“sorb tree”) + berry. (The first part is from Latin sorbus, not English service (“assistance”).)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).