picnic

Etymology

It is borrowed from French pique-nique (also written piquenique),^[2][3][4][5] and the OED thinks it may partly have come through German Picknick, which is itself from French.^[2][5] The French word is recorded in 1694 in the phrase repas à piquenique, and by 1718 for a meal at which everyone paid or brought a share;^[2] Barnhart dates it to 1692,^[4] and Etymonline finds it first in 1649 as the name of a character in a satirical poem about a drinking club.^[3] Its origin is uncertain:^[4][6][7] it is probably formed on piquer (“to pick, peck”) with a rhyming second element,^[2][4][8] perhaps nique (“nothing at all, a trifle”),^{[2][9][5][10]} which Hoad compares with the phrase faire la nique (“to mock”).^[11] Klein compares the rhyming pêle-mêle behind pell-mell.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A fashionable social gathering to which every guest brought a share of the food, not necessarily held out of doors: 1748, in Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son.^[2][4][3] The thing itself seems to have been rare in England before about 1800,^[3] and Weekley notes that early English examples are often spelled pique-nique and printed in italics as a foreign word.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The shared party soon gave way to the outdoor meal, and both senses already existed in French.^[10][13] By the early 19th century the OED's sense was an informal meal eaten outside, often on an excursion;^[2][7] the old sense is now obsolete.^[2] In 1802 the Pic-Nic Society, a London club, gave the word to its members.^[2] From 1803 to 1836 a picnic could also be a miscellany with many contributors.^[2] In American colloquial use picnic came to mean an enjoyable or easy experience (1870), especially in the negative no picnic (1884);^[2][14] in Australian and New Zealand English it was used ironically for a hard time or a source of trouble (1896),^[2] a sense that Collins still records as chiefly Australian.^[6] In North America a picnic is also a cut of pork from the shoulder, short for picnic ham (1910).^[2] The verb, to have a picnic, appears in 1815 in a letter by Fanny Burney,^[2][5] though Etymonline dates it to 1842;^[3] it keeps a k before endings such as -ing and -ed to preserve the hard sound of the c.^[3]

Timeline

• 1748 – a social gathering to which each guest brought food.^[2][4][3]
• 1802 – a member of the Pic-Nic Society.^[2]
• 1803 – a miscellany or collection with many contributors (until 1836).^[2]
• 1815 – the verb, to have a picnic;^[2][5] 1842 in Etymonline.^[3]
• 1821 – the verb, to provide a meal by contributions.^[2][4]
• 1870 – (US, colloquial) something pleasant or easy.^[2]
• 1884 – no picnic.^[2]
• 1896 – (Australia, New Zealand) a hard time.^[2]
• 1910 – (North America) a cut of pork shoulder.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. An excursion on which people take food to eat in the open air.
2. An informal meal eaten outdoors: We had a picnic on the riverbank.
3. (informal) An easy or pleasant experience, mostly in the negative no picnic: Moving house with three children is no picnic.
4. (informal, chiefly Australian) A troublesome situation.
5. (North America) A cut of pork from the shoulder, often smoked.

Verb

1. To have a picnic or take part in one.

Word family

• picnicker
• picnicky

Related words

• pique
• pick

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
14. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)