jackfruit tree
- noun
- Many farmers in the region grow a jackfruit tree for both its delicious fruit and valuable timber.
Examples
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The jackfruit tree in the backyard produces enormous fruit that weighs up to 80 pounds.
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He had two papaya trees, a guava, a custard apple, and a jackfruit tree.
Fiction book (1995) -
The only noteworthy piece of furniture is a beat-up bed made of lumber from a jackfruit tree.
Fiction book (2000) -
During the summer, the jackfruit tree attracts numerous birds and insects with its sweet-smelling fruit.
Synonyms
A large fruit with rough green skin and sweet yellow flesh, or the tree that grows it
A tropical tree that has very large fruit you can eat
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a tree that produces jackfruit' is directly and compositionally derived from combining 'jackfruit' (a large fruit) with 'tree' (a perennial plant), so knowing both constituents gives the full sense. This noun–noun compounding is a transparent, cross-linguistically common pattern and would be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows the two words.
Etymology
Jackfruit tree gets its name from the very large fruit it grows, the jackfruit. One popular story says traders changed a local word 'chakka' into 'jack', so the name simply means a tree that produces the big 'fruit'.