picnic
- an excursion or outing in which the participants carry food with them and share a meal in the open air.
- the food eaten on such an excursion.
- Also called picnic ham, picnic shoulder. a section of pork shoulder, usually boned, smoked, and weighing 4–6 pounds.Compare daisy(def 2).
- Informal. an enjoyable experience or time, easy task, etc.: Being laid up in a hospital is no picnic.
- to go on or take part in a picnic.
Origin of picnic
Examples from the Web for picnic
Contemporary Examples
An 1882 travel guide calls it “a good place for oarsmen and campers to picnic,” with a hotel called the White Cross.
The team behind Indochine and Acme is also opening Tijuana Picnic in the LES sometime this month.
Who to See and Where to be Seen: The Hot Tips for New York Fashion WeekBarbara Ragghianti
September 3, 2014
Sometimes, when the sun is warm and the wind is relatively calm, we set a blanket down for a picnic.
“The idea is to get out in the open air, have a picnic,” Wrigley said.
100 Years of Wrigley Field: Are the Chicago Cubs Horrible Because of the Ballpark?Luke Epplin
March 28, 2014
Here, in the back of the café, there was a picnic style table.
Historical Examples
I brought her out here for a trolley ride and a picnic luncheon.
KMary Roberts Rinehart
You tell the boys that if I find this street scrawled over any more, the picnic's off.
KMary Roberts Rinehart
Two dollars for a scholars' picnic in a place where no child is supposed to have money.
The Boy Life of NapoleonEugenie Foa
She never missed a picnic to Annandale, the Waterfalls, or Mashobra.
Camps, Quarters and Casual PlacesArchibald Forbes
Would a Sunday-school picnic constitute a bribe worth mentioning?
Meadow GrassAlice Brown
picnic
- a trip or excursion to the country, seaside, etc, on which people bring food to be eaten in the open air
- any informal meal eaten outside
- (as modifier)a picnic lunch
- informal, mainly Australian a troublesome situation or experience
- no picnic informal a hard or disagreeable task
- (intr) to eat a picnic
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for 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.
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- (cf. traffic/trafficking, panic/panicky, shellac/shellacked).
Idioms and Phrases with picnic
picnic
see no picnic.