white currant

4.4

Small white berries you can eat that grow on a bush

noun

: grosella blanca

The sweet flavor of white currants makes them a delightful addition to desserts.

Examples

After tasting the white currants, I decided to add them to my fruit salad.
She picked some white currants from the bush to make her famous jam.
I got black currants, I got champagne currants, I got white currants, red currants.

Synonyms

Ribes sativum

vswhite currant

Specialized

9.9

A garden bush that makes small white berries used for jam

is the everyday name for the same plant rather than a scientific label

Surface Forms

white currant singular

white currants plural

Morphology

white + currant

This is a straightforward adjective + noun composition where the adjective 'white' simply describes the color of the 'currant', so the meaning (a currant that is white or translucent) is directly derivable from the parts. Such color + noun combinations are cross-linguistically common and follow standard compositional patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily understand it.

Etymology

White currant is named for its pale, almost see-through berries: white for the colour and currant for the small berry. One popular story says the word 'currant' came from an old name for small dried grapes from the town of Corinth, so today white currant simply means the pale type of this edible berry.