a South Asian tree with structures that grow down from the branches to the ground and then grow into new roots and trunks 榕树(见于南亚,树枝上有气根伸入土壤,变成新的树干) Word Originlate 16th cent.: from Portuguese, from Gujarati vāṇiyo ‘man of the trading caste’, from Sanskrit. Originally denoting a Hindu merchant, the term was applied, by Europeans in the mid 17th cent., to a tree under which such traders had built a pagoda.