Forms: 6 lechia, -ya, 7 lichea, 8 letchee, 8–9 lichee, 9 lé ché, leecha, leeche, leechee, li-chee, lichi, li-chi, lychee, ? lychus, 8– litchi. [Chinese li-chi.] The fruit of the Nephelium litchi (N.O. Sapindaceæ), a tree that has been introduced from China into Bengal (see quots.).
1588. Parke, trans. Mendoza’s Hist. China, iii. 6. They haue a kinde of plummes that they doo call Lechias.
1697. Dampier, Voy. (1729), II. I. 24. The Lichea … is as big as a small Pear, somewhat long shaped, of a reddish Colour.
1727. A. Hamilton, New Acc. E. Indies, II. xlvi. 156. Delicious Fruits, such as … Rambostans, Letchees, and Dureans.
1775. Ann. Reg., II. 33. Among those plants are the lichees, a very fine fruit of China of several sorts.
1822. Heber, Journ. Upper Prov. India (1844), I. iv. 60. Of the fruits which this season offers, the finest are leeches and mangoes.
1842. Macaulay, W. Hastings (near end). He tried also to naturalize in Worcestershire the delicious leechee.
1878. P. Robinson, In My Indian Garden, 49. The lichi hiding under a shell of ruddy brown its globes of translucent and delicately fragrant flesh.
1887. Standard, 16 Sept., 5/3. The litchi and the longan.
attrib. 1876. Harley, Mat. Med. (ed. 6), 707. The delicious ‘litchi-nuts.’
1879. Miss Maive Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales, xv. 91. Here are a hundred and sixty lichi fruits for you.
