ginkgo

See also: Ginkgo and gingko

English
Gingko tree

Etymology

From Japanese 銀杏, from Chinese 銀杏／银杏 (yínxìng, “silver apricot”). The same characters as in Chinese are used in Japanese, where they can be read ginkyō. Ginkgo is the name that is printed in Amoenitatum exoticarum politico-physico-medicarum Fasciculi V [...] (1712) authored by Engelbert Kaempfer, the first Westerner to see the species. In his way of transcription ginkyo would have been Ginkjo or Ginkio but was printed as Ginkgo.[1] This was read by Carl Linnaeus, and the misspelling stuck.

Pronunciation
  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈɡɪŋ.kəʊ/

Noun

ginkgo (plural ginkgos or ginkgoes)

  1. Ginkgo biloba, a tree native to China with small, fan-shaped leaves and edible seeds.
  2. The seed of the ginkgo tree.

Alternative forms

Synonyms

Translations

References
  1. Wolfgang Michel, On Engelbert Kaempfer’s “Ginkgo”, 2011

Anagrams

Portuguese

Alternative forms

Noun

ginkgo m (plural ginkgos)

  1. ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba, a tree of China)

Spanish

Noun

ginkgo m (plural ginkgos)

  1. ginkgo
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