picnic的词源

英文词源

picnic: picnic: [18] Picnic was borrowed from French piquenique, a word which seems to have originated around the end of the 17th century. It is not clear where it came from, but one theory is that it was based on the verb piquer ‘pick, peck’ (source of English pick), with the rhyming nique perhaps added in half reminiscence of the obsolete nique ‘trifle’. Originally the word denoted a sort of party to which everyone brought along some food; the notion of an ‘outdoor meal’ did not emerge until the 19th century.
picnic (n.): 1748 (in Chesterfield's "Letters"), but rare before c. 1800 as an English institution; originally a fashionable pot-luck social affair, not necessarily out of doors; from French piquenique (1690s), perhaps a reduplication of piquer "to pick, peck," from Old French (see pike (n.2)), or the second element may be nique "worthless thing," from a Germanic source. Figurative sense of "something easy" is from 1886. Picnic table recorded from 1926, originally a folding table.
picnic (v.): "go on a picnic," 1842, from picnic (n.). Related: Picnicked; picnicking. The -k- is inserted to preserve the "k" sound of -c- before a suffix beginning in -i-, -y-, or -e- (compare traffic/trafficking, panic/panicky, shellac/shellacked).

来自法语pique-nique,来自pique,捡，拾，词源同pick.nique可能为pique同韵构词。用以指过去每个人准备一份食物的聚餐社交活动，可在室内，也可以室外，但现仅指室外野餐。

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：picnic 词源，picnic 含义。