荔枝

Etymology
. First attested as in the “Rhapsody on the ”  by  of the. During the time of, lychee was one of the exotic plants cultivated in the grand imperial Shanglin Park, introduced from China's south.

Traditionally, has been interpreted as equivalent to, based on an excerpt from Funan-ji (扶南記), a now-lost text cited in other works, such as the  :

The , citing the “Preface to Lychee Painting” (荔枝圖序) by, interprets orthographically:

Recent studies have discounted the above as folk etymologies, proposing instead that it is a disyllabic borrowing from a language during the Late 🇨🇬 period; compare modern 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬. The precise shape of the source word is now obscure, and there are two possibilities that can explain the disyllabicity of the borrowing :


 * That the first syllable transcribed a Kra-Dai class noun (perhaps “fruit”), and the second syllable,, corresponded to the Tai-Kadai name for “lychee”; or
 * That the Kra-Dai source word for “lychee” was disyllabic and already not easily analysable.

Noun



 * 1) lychee

Descendants
Others: