茗荷

Etymology 1
→ →

From earlier mega (see below). The kanji spelling is an example of phonetic ateji.

Noun

 * 1) myoga or Japanese ginger, of which only the shoots and flower buds are used in cooking
 * 2) a dimwit, an idiot, a stupid person
 * 3) a kind of

Etymology 2
From. Some sources  mention that this might be a compound of  +. However, the semantics are backwards compared to most other Japanese compounds. In addition, this term appears in writings of the with the spellings  and. The me syllable here is spelled phonetically with the so-called Type-A or reading of e1, but  in Old Japanese had the Type-B or  reading of e2. These two different e phonetic values were distinct in Old Japanese, indicating that +  is not the actual derivation.

(For more details on Old Japanese spellings and phonetic values, see )

This reading is obsolete in modern Japanese.

Noun

 * 1)  myoga or Japanese ginger