瓠 (hù): calabash gourd; bottle-gourd

Meanings

1 calabash gourd; bottle-gourd
2 vessel made from a hollowed gourd

Characters

瓠

hù

calabash gourd

Examples

一棵瓠藤爬上了架子。

Yī kē hù téng pá shàng le jià zi.

A bottle-gourd vine climbs the trellis.

乡下人把瓠瓜晒干做水瓢。

Xiāngxiàrén bǎ hùguā shàigān zuò shuǐ piáo.

Country folk dry calabashes to use as water dippers.

虾仁烧瓠子是江南夏日名菜。

Xiārén shāo hùzi shì Jiāngnán xiàrì míngcài.

Stewed calabash with prawns is a classic Jiangnan summer dish.

Tips

usage

Live in Jiangnan / southern cuisine: 瓠瓜 or 瓠子 is bottle-gourd, a summer vegetable picked young and stewed. The dried mature gourd (hardened, hollowed) becomes 葫芦 — wine flask, ladle, or Daoist immortal's container. The literary 瓠犀 ('gourd-seeds') is a classical compliment for a woman's neat white teeth.

history

The chapter 《庄子·逍遥游》 has the famous 大瓠之种 — 'seeds of the giant gourd' — story, where 惠子 tells 庄子 he grew a gourd too big to use and Zhuangzi answers that uselessness IS its use (float on it). The classical reading there is hù.

register

Common in cookery and rural speech in the south, less so in northern Mandarin where 葫芦 covers most gourd-talk. In northern markets you also see hú as a colloquial reading.

Components

radical

瓜 guā

melon; gourd

Right 瓜 (Kangxi #97) — the melon-and-gourd radical, an outline of a trailing vine with hanging fruit. Indexes the gourd family alongside 瓤 (pulp) and 瓢 (ladle).

phonetic

夸 kuā

to boast (here phonetic)

Left 夸 supplies the sound. The Old Chinese reading was closer to a *k-w-ah series that drifted into the modern hù; same phonetic family includes 夸, 跨, 垮.