"small, tart, reddish fruit" 1600s, earlier called raspis (1530s) with spelling variants including raspas, raspice, raspys, raspes, rasbes. Originally also used of blackberries, strawberries, gooseberries and other fruits interchangeable in culinary and medicinal use, but not botanically related. A word of uncertain origin.
Possibly it is from Latin raspacia, raspaticium, raspetum, a type of tart wine, with the fruit so called either from the berries coming to substitute for the original grapes (grapes require warmer climates than raspberries) or perhaps because the berries were thought to resemble the wine's flavor. Rospeys, rayspeys, rospyse and raspise are all documented 15c. English names for this wine.
Wyne
Raspoticium (dutche men call it rappis) Raspish wyne [...] it is made in this wyse. Some sower grapes together with the rype are put in the wyne pres to be prest out together. Or yt is better, let the grapes be kepte and brooken together with
Raspaciis, & put into the vessell with the
Must: That
Must or newe wyne, by the iuice of this
Raspacia (Scapos Frenche men cal grappes, our contrymen rappen, wherupon the wyne taketh the name) or kirnels in the grapes whiche are sower, dothe get a certain ponticitie or tast lyke wormwood and bynding:
Arnoldus de Villa Noua. In our contrey they make it otherwyse, they fyll the wyne vessels with holl clusters well rypet, and power old wyn in to them, and as often as they drawe any wyne out of it, they fill it againe. [The treasure of Euonymus, Translated (with great diligence, et laboure) out of Latin, by Peter Morvvying. 1559.]
Ultimately the wine gets its name from Medieval Latin raspa, "grape" (by 13c.); but compare the old Italian word ráspo, defined by Florio's dictionary (1590s) as "the fruit or berrie called Raspise."
The old suggestion that it is from a Germanic source akin to English rasp (v.), with an original sense of "rough berry," based on appearance, is perhaps folk etymology. Older English names for the raspberry include hindberry, framboys and briar Idaea.
By 1733 the name was used of the plant itself, native to Europe and Asiatic Russia. The name was applied to a similar shrub in North America. As the name for a color between pink and scarlet, by 1832, originally in medical literature. The meaning "rude sound" (1890) is shortening of raspberry tart, rhyming slang for fart.
