Bramblewait

bramblewait (n.) — BRAM-bl-wayt. The motionless moment in front of a blackberry bush, arm outstretched, in which you become convinced that a better berry exists slightly deeper in and slightly further up.

From bramble, and wait. Said to have been first recorded in a Shropshire hedgerow in 1897, though the only source for that claim is a man who wanted the word to sound older than it was. It has a cousin in the Norfolk verb to hedgeling, meaning to want fruit more than you fear nettles.

A bramblewait resolves in one of two ways. Either you take the near berry and eat it in mild disappointment, aware of having settled, or you commit to the far one and pay the toll in scratches, stains and one sock full of thorns. There is no third outcome. The berry you were reaching for at the start is never the berry you eventually eat.

Usage: He stood in a four-minute bramblewait, waded in past his elbows, and came back with nettle rash, a torn cuff and a single berry the size of a pea, which he ate with the expression of a man who had won something.