ginseng

Etymology

It is a borrowing from Chinese, borrowed from Chinese 人參 (rénshēn),^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} formed from 人 (rén, “man, person”) and 參 (shēn), a name for ginseng and related herbs.^[3][2][8][4] The first element is usually explained by the forked root, which looks like a human figure,^{[9][3][7][10]} and the OED adds that it also resembles the Chinese character for "person";^[8] Etymonline calls the meaning of the second element obscure.^[6] The OED, revised in 2017, gives a fuller route: the word came partly through New Latin ginsem, also ginseng, and partly through French ginseng, both from Hokkien 人參 (jîn-sim) and its Mandarin equivalent in a 17th-century pronunciation.^[8] The Latin ginsem of 1654 probably renders the Chinese word as the Italian author Martini heard it, or Portuguese jinsém, recorded in 1657; the forms ending in a nasal written ng may come from a misreading of a final m, which some early European texts used for the sound /ŋ/.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The fleshy root of the East Asian plant, prized as a cure-all in Chinese medicine: 1654, as gimsem, in a translation of Martini's Bellum Tartaricum.^[8][7][5] By the early 1700s the form had become ginseng.^[7]

Semantic evolution

From 1677, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the name was used for the plant itself, Panax ginseng.^[8] Johnson (1755) called it "a root brought lately into Europe" and guessed that the word was Chinese.^[11] In 17th-century English the plant was also called ninzin or nisi, forms that reached Europe from the same Chinese word through Japanese.^[8] From 1818 the word was applied, with a distinguishing word, to plants of other genera whose roots are used in herbal medicine, such as Siberian ginseng;^[8] the North American Panax quinquefolius is also called ginseng.^[10][5]

Timeline

• 1654 – gimsem, the root used in Chinese medicine.^[8][7]
• 1677 – the plant Panax ginseng.^[8]
• early 18th century – the spelling ginseng.^[7]
• 1818 – other plants with medicinal roots, as Siberian ginseng.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. The forked aromatic root of an East Asian or North American plant of the genus Panax, or a preparation of it, used in herbal medicine as a tonic or stimulant: She drinks ginseng tea every morning.^[10][5][8]
2. The plant itself, Panax ginseng of East Asia or Panax quinquefolius of North America, with palmate leaves and red berries.^[10][5][8]
3. With a distinguishing word, any of various plants of other genera with roots used in herbal medicine, such as Siberian ginseng.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.