菓

菓 is a derivative of 果, formed by placing:

艸 (grass, plant) — semantic component

果 (fruit) — original root

Adding 艸 emphasizes the meaning “fruit / plant food,” creating a slightly more specialized graph used primarily phonetically in compounds like 菓子.

In early script forms 果 depicts a tree with a fruit inside it.

菓 simply adds 艸 to clarify that the object is indeed a type of edible plant product.

과자 (菓子) — sweets, cookies, snacks

과일 (菓 + 物/果) — fruit

실과 (菓) — fruits (older, more literary)

과차 (菓茶) — fruit and tea served to guests (traditional term)

Relation to 果:

果 — fruit

菓 — fruit or sweets derived from fruit, later generalized to all confections

In most languages in the Sinosphere:

果 is more general

菓 is more specialized

In premodern East Asia, 菓子 often referred to:

- offerings of fruit

- dried or candied foods

- ceremonial sweets used in temples or ancestral rites

Thus 菓 historically had sacred and festive associations.

Phonological distinction in Korean:

菓 meaning snacks — short vowel (gwa)

菓 meaning fruit — long vowel (historical; modern pronunciation distinction mostly lost, but preserved orthographically and in dictionary notes)

Traditional Korean dictionaries (e.g., the 1936 조선어사전) mark:

菓子 — 과자 (short vowel)

果 / 菓 — 과 meaning fruit (long vowel)

This is one of the small sets where Sino-Korean retained contrastive vowel length.

Classical citations:

《廣雅·釋器》 (Guangya·Shiqi)

「菓，果也。」

“菓 means fruit.”

This shows that 菓 was understood as a variant of 果 early on.

《說文解字》 (Shuowen Jiezi) (via later commentaries)

Although 菓 does not appear in the original 许慎 text, later lexicographers gloss it as:

「草木之實曰菓。」

“The fruits of trees and grasses are called 菓.”

While the character 菓 itself is rare in classical texts, its derivative 菓子 appears in Han-era writings to mean edible sweets or fruit offerings, especially in ritual contexts.