sherry

noun

sher·​ry ˈsher-ē 

plural sherries

: a Spanish fortified wine with a distinctive nutty flavor

also : a similar wine produced elsewhere

Examples of sherry in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Isle of Arran Distillers Prices from: £4,500 for second fill bourbon barrels Cask types: second-fill bourbon (£4,500), first-fill ex-bourbon barrel 200L (£5,000), second-fill sherry (£6,000), first-fill ex-sherry hogshead 250L (£6,650) some additional cask styles added occasionally. —Mark Littler, Forbes.com, 7 May 2026

According to House of Rare, it was aged for three years in ex-bourbon barrels and then at least three months in Pedro Ximenez sherry casks (it’s being released in three lots, so the finishing time may vary depending on which lot). —Jonah Flicker, Robb Report, 4 May 2026

And his choose-your-own-cut steak frites comes with a decadent au poivre sauce made from roasted bone marrow, sherry and four varieties of peppercorn. —Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 Apr. 2026

Expect to try tipples like a frozen piña colada with whole coffee beans and a PX sherry float. —John Metcalfe, Mercury News, 23 Apr. 2026

Word History

Etymology

alteration of earlier sherris (taken as plural), from Xeres (now Jerez), Spain

First Known Use

1584, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for sherry

• aerie
• airy
• arie
• barre
• cherry
• clary
• dairy
• eyrie
• faerie
• faery
• fairy
• ferry

Kids Definition

sherry

noun

sher·​ry ˈsher-ē 

plural sherries

: a wine with a nutty flavor

Etymology

named for Xeres (now spelled Jerez), a city in Spain where the wine was originally made

Word Origin

It is common to name wines after the part of a country where they are made. The wine called sherry today was first made in a town originally called, in Spanish, Xeres. The English approximation of the Spanish pronunciation was \ˈsher-ēz\, spelled sherris. After a time, people thought that sherris was a plural and so made a singular form, sherry, by cutting off the supposed plural ending. The \sh\ sound symbolized by x in Spanish (later by j) changed to a \ḵ\ or \h\, so that the modern Spanish pronunciation of Jerez is even less like English sherry.