‘杏核’ (xìng hé) literally combines ‘杏’ (xìng), meaning ‘apricot’, and ‘核’ (hé), meaning ‘pit’, ‘stone’, or ‘kernel’. It refers specifically to the hard, inedible seed found inside an apricot fruit — the part surrounded by the fleshy fruit and enclosed in a woody shell. Unlike the edible fruit, the pit is typically discarded after eating, though it’s sometimes used in traditional crafts or studied in botany for seed structure.

This term is commonly used in everyday contexts involving fruit preparation, cooking, or agriculture — for example, when describing how to pit apricots before making jam, or noting that apricot pits contain trace amounts of amygdalin. It’s a concrete, countable noun and often appears with measure words like ‘个’ (gè) or ‘粒’ (lì). While ‘核’ alone can refer to pits of many fruits (e.g., peach, plum), ‘杏核’ specifies the apricot variety exclusively.