What Does “brown as a berry” mean?
Definition:
If you are brown as a berry, you have tanned skin due to sun exposure. This idiom is mainly heard in the UK and Australia.
A variation of this phrase:
as brown as a berry.
What’s the origin of ‘brown as a berry‘?
One of the earliest uses of this simile dates back to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in the 1380s. In the Prologue, Chaucer described the horse that a monk was riding as follows:
He was a lord full fat and in good point;
His eyen stepe and rolling in his head
That stemed as a fornice of a led;
His botes souple, his hors in gret estat,
Now certainly he was a sayre prelat.
He was not pale as a forpined gost;
A fat swan loved he best of any rost;His palfrey was as broune as is a bery.
Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, (the Monk’s Tale.
Quote
All through that summer Heidi went up to the pasture every day with Peter and the goats, and grew brown as a berry in the mountain sunshine.
1956 [1880], Johanna Spyri, Heidi, translation of original by Eileen Hall, page 39.
Example(s)
When he came back from Morocco, he was as brown as a berry.
She spent her vacation on a tropical island and has become as brown as a berry.
After spending three weeks in this seaside holiday resort, I am now as brown as a berry.