果园

guǒyuán · HSK 7

orchard

🍎🌳 果园 = 果 fruit + 园 garden = an orchard, a fruit-garden

果 means fruit (as in 水果) and 园 means garden or park (as in 公园). Put them together and you get a garden full of fruit trees: an orchard. The guǒyuán reading reuses 果 guǒ from common fruit words.

果 — fruit shape 田-like top + tree 木
果 is a pictograph: early forms show a tree (木) with round fruit hanging on its branches, later stylized into the 田-like top. Its original meaning was 'fruit', which extended to 'result, outcome' — the fruit of an action — and to 'resolute, decisive'.

园 — enclosure 囗 + 元 (yuán, phonetic)
园 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The outer 囗 (enclosure) shows a walled or fenced-off area, while 元 inside gives the sound 'yuán'. It originally meant a fenced garden or orchard, and still means garden, park, or cultivated grounds today.

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