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
Related Words for picnic
barbecue, outing, excursion, cookout, clambake, walkover, pushover, lark, breeze, cinch, snap, setupExamples from the Web for picnic
Contemporary Examples of picnic
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 of picnic
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 for picnic
Word Origin and History for picnic
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.
"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.