pecan

Etymology

It is borrowed from French pacane, recorded from 1712 in the French of the Mississippi Valley,^[1][2][3] from Miami pakani,^{[1][4][2][3][5]} from Proto-Algonquian *pakan- (“nut, large nut”),^[2][4] a derivative of *pake- (“to crack nuts”).^[2] The OED notes that its cognates in other Algonquian languages are used of hickory nuts and walnuts;^[1] the dictionaries compare Cree pakan (“hard-shelled nut”), Ojibwe bagaan and Abenaki pagann.^[6][7][8][9] English first had the word as paccan,^{[6][7][10][8]} and the OED compares Spanish pacano, recorded from 1772.^[1][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The nut of the pecan tree: 1761, in an English translation of Charlevoix's journal of a voyage to North America.^[1][7] Etymonline gives 1712 for paccan, the tree or a related hickory,^[6][12] which is the date of the French word.^[1]

Semantic evolution

The tree is named from 1773, in a journal printed in Thomas Hutchins's description of the western territories, where the timber is listed as paccan.^[1][11][8] Barnhart dates both the spelling pecan and the use for the nut of this tree to 1822,^[8] although the OED's nut sense is older.^[1] Early American records show many spellings: in 1786 Thomas Jefferson wrote that the paccan-nut was the Illinois nut and that paccan was the common name south of the Potomac, and later records have peccane, pecon, packawn and pacon.^[11] The Merriam-Webster Unabridged also uses the word for the wood of the tree.^[7]

Timeline

• 1761 – the nut of the pecan tree.^[1][7]
• 1773 – the tree, a tall hickory of the southern United States, as paccan.^[1][11][8]
• 1822 – the spelling pecan.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. The smooth, oval, thin-shelled nut of this tree, with a sweet, oily kernel: She baked a pie with a cup of chopped pecans.^[9][7][1]
2. A tall hickory, Carya illinoinensis, of the south-central United States, which bears these nuts.^[9][7][1]
3. The wood of this tree.^[7]

Usage notes

The pronunciation varies by region in the United States: early 20th-century dialect notes from Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia record stress on the second syllable as universal there, while a 1941 survey of New England found speakers divided between first- and second-syllable stress.^[11] The first edition of the OED (1904) gave only the pronunciation /pɪˈkæn/.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
3. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ a b c d e Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
12. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins