Ginkgo
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Ginkgo biloba, a tree native to China with small, fan-shaped leaves and edible seeds.
"Like cycads — their gymnosperm relatives — and ferns, the ginkgo produces motile sperm. […] In fact, the tree was originally thought to be extinct in the wild until two populations were located in China. Such native ginkgos remain rare, with a preference for rich, streamside habitats."
- 2 deciduous dioecious Chinese tree having fan-shaped leaves and fleshy yellow seeds; exists almost exclusively in cultivation especially as an ornamental street tree wordnet
- 3 The seed of a ginkgo tree.
"I swear the gingko's working in reverse"
Example
More examples"Ginkgo trees are the most commonly found trees lining Seoul's streets."
Etymology
From Japanese 銀杏 (ginkyō), from Chinese 銀杏／银杏 (yínxìng, “silver apricot”). 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. This was read by Carl Linnaeus, and the misspelling stuck.
Related phrases
More for "ginkgo"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.