a softer, usually edible part of a nut, seed, or fruit stone contained within its hard shell 果仁 ■the seed and hard husk of a cereal, especially wheat 谷粒,麦粒 ■[in sing.]the central or most important part of something 核心;中心 this is the kernel of the argument. 这是争论的核心。 ■the most basic level or core of an operating system of a computer, responsible for resource allocation, file management, and security (计算机操作系统的)核心程序 ■[as modifier](Linguistics)denoting a basic unmarked linguistic string (语言学)核心句