Word.ws English Dictionary

berley

berley noun: material (frequently rancid) used as bait to attract fish or other organisms.

Noun

berley (countable and uncountable, plural berleys)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand) Material (frequently rancid) used as bait to attract fish or other organisms.
    • Another artificial bait can be made by mixing up a berley, savoury in smell to the piscine race, but somewhat obnoxious to the olfactory nerves of human beings, of rotten herrings or tinned fish, bran and flour, into a tough paste and putting it into little bags of mosquito net or fine muslin.1895, Charles Thackeray, The Amateur Fisherman's Guide, page 34
    • In Australia, live baits or strip baits in a berley trail produce the big fish and a lot of anglers specialise in using this technique.1988, Richard Allan, Go Fish Australia: All You Need to Know about Freshwater and Saltwater Fishing - a Comprehensive Guide for Everyone, page 45
    Synonyms:
    chum

Examples of berley in a sentence

  • Apart from its use as bait, bread is an essential berley for many fish.2007, Julie McEnally, Complete Book of Fishing Baits and Rigs, page 18:
  • A few larger black petrels and flesh-footed shearwaters land close by and pick away at scraps of berley.2013 May, Chris Gaskin, “Lost & Found”, in New Zealand Geographic, number 121:

Synonyms of berley

Forms of berley

pluralberleys
alternative formburley

Questions about berley

What does berley mean?
Berley means material (frequently rancid) used as bait to attract fish or other organisms.
How do you use berley in a sentence?
Apart from its use as bait, bread is an essential berley for many fish.
What part of speech is berley?
Berley is a noun.
What is the plural of berley?
The plural of berley is berleys.

Words near berley in the dictionary

  1. Berlang
  2. Berlanga
  3. Berlangas
  4. Berlepsch's tinamou
  5. Berlepsch's tinamous
  6. berley
  7. berleys
  8. Berlești
  9. berlin
  10. Berlin black
  11. Berlin blue

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: berley (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “berley.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/berley. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.