Word.ws English Dictionary

wherry

/ˈʍɛɹi/

wherry noun: a boat or light ship used to navigate inland waterways.

Noun

wherry (countable and uncountable, plural wherries)

  1. (countable) A boat or light ship used to navigate inland waterways.
    • O how I should like to see her floating in the water yonder, turban and all, with her train streaming after her, and her nose like the beak of a wherry.1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 2, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
    • He went out for Freshman rowing but didn't make any of the crews and took to rowing by himself in a wherry three afternoons a week.1932, John Dos Passos, 1919, Houghton Mifflin Company 2000, p. 67
  2. (countable, historical) A flat-bottomed vessel once employed by British merchants, notably in East Anglia, sometimes converted into pleasure boats.
    • Here I used to enjoy myself in playing about the bridge stairs, and often in the watermen's wherries, with other boys. On one of these occasions there was another boy with me in a wherry, and we went out into the current of the river: while we were there two more stout boys came to us in another...1789, Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
    • The river was astir early and late with barges, wherries, and craft of every description.1928, Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015
  3. A liquor made from the pulp of crab-apples after the verjuice is extracted.

Verb

wherry (third-person singular simple present wherries, present participle wherrying, simple past and past participle wherried)

  1. To travel or transport in a wherry.

Proper noun capitalized: Wherry

Wherry (plural Wherrys)

  1. A surname.

wherry meaning in Tamil

wherry in Tamil

ஒருவர் செல்லும் பந்தயப் பரிசல், பயணிகளை ஏற்றிச் செல்லும் தட்டைப்படகு

Forms of wherry

Noun
pluralwherries
Verb
third-person singular presentwherries
present participlewherrying
past participlewherried
pastwherried
Proper noun
pluralWherrys

Origin of wherry

From Middle English whery (“small boat”), of obscure origin but cognate to French houari and Breton ouari, as well as Welsh chweri (“small boat”).

Words formed from wherry

Words that rhyme with wherry

9 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wherry

What does wherry mean?
Wherry means a boat or light ship used to navigate inland waterways.
What is wherry in Tamil?
Wherry in Tamil is ஒருவர் செல்லும் பந்தயப் பரிசல், பயணிகளை ஏற்றிச் செல்லும் தட்டைப்படகு. See Wherry meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is wherry?
Wherry can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce wherry?
Wherry is pronounced /ˈʍɛɹi/.
What is the plural of wherry?
The plural of wherry is wherries.

Words near wherry in the dictionary

  1. wherreting
  2. wherrets
  3. wherried
  4. wherries
  5. Wherrol Flat
  6. wherry
  7. wherrying
  8. wherryite
  9. wherryman
  10. wherrymen
  11. Wherrys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wherry (page history and authors); Wherry (page history and authors); wherry (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-wherry.wav.

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