Example sentences
xià夏tiān天wǒ我xǐ喜huan欢chī吃xī西guā瓜。
I like eating watermelon in summer.
zhè这ge个xī西guā瓜hěn很dà大。
This watermelon is big.
About this word
西 is west, 瓜 is a melon or gourd, so a watermelon is the melon that came from the west. The name records where the fruit came from, and Chinese labels melons this way as a family: 南瓜 is the southern gourd (pumpkin), 冬瓜 the winter melon, 黄瓜 the yellow gourd (cucumber). 瓜 is the head noun in all of them, so the set is easy to hold in memory.
The story behind the character
西
西 was once a bird's nest. The earliest form is a nest, and it meant "to roost". A bird settling in for the night. Then it got borrowed for "west," and people had to coin a new 栖 for roosting. So 西 wasn't a direction; it was a bird's nest.
瓜
瓜 is a gourd hanging on a vine. The middle lump is the fruit, and the strokes curling off both sides are the vine it grows from. Xu Shen sorted fruit by where it sits: on a tree it's 果, on the ground it's 蓏, and 瓜 is the one that trails along the soil. 西瓜, the west gourd, is the watermelon.