Ginkgo Definition

giŋkō; also giŋkgō
gingkoes, ginkgoes
noun
ginkgoes
An Asian tree (Ginkgo biloba) with fan-shaped leaves and fleshy, yellow, foul-smelling seeds enclosing a silvery, edible inner kernel: the only living member of a class (Ginkgoatae) of gymnosperms.
Webster's New World
pronoun

A taxonomic genus within the family Ginkgoaceaegymnosperm trees with fan-shaped leaves, the sole known surviving genus of order Ginkgophyta with only one surviving species Ginkgo biloba..

Wiktionary

Other Word Forms of Ginkgo

Noun

Singular:
ginkgo
Plural:
ginkgoes, ginkgos

Origin of Ginkgo

  • From Chinese 鴨脚 (yājiǎo) "duck feet" due to the shape of the leaves, the pronunciation then changing (along with the characters) to 銀杏 (yínxìng) "silver apricot". The same characters 銀杏 are used in Japanese (ichō) and Korean (eunhang). The Japanese characters used to write ginkgo look as though they could be read ginkyō, and this was the name Engelbert Kaempfer, the first Westerner to see the species in 1690, wrote down in his Amoenitates Exoticae (1712). However, his "y" was misread as a "g", and the misspelling stuck.

    From Wiktionary

  • Probably from ginkyō (with graphic confusion of a romanized form of this word leading to the spelling with -kg- in European languages) Japanese gin silver (from Middle Chinese ŋin) (ultimately from Proto-Sino-Tibetan ŋul) (Tibetan dngul) (Burmese ngwe) Japanese kyō apricot, any of several members of the genus Prunus (from Middle Chinese xfiaːjŋ`) (also the source of Mandarin xìng)

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

  • From Chinese 銀杏 (yínxìng) "silver apricot". The same characters are used in Japanese (ichō) and Korean (eunhang). The Japanese characters used to write ginkgo look as though they could be read ginkyō, and this was the name Engelbert Kaempfer, the first Westerner to see the species in 1690, wrote down in his Amoenitates Exoticae (1712). However, his y was misread as a g, and the misspelling stuck.

    From Wiktionary

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