where does the word picnic come from
You'll be heartened to know 'picnic' has nothing to do with crowds gathering to witness the lynching of blacks (or anyone else, for that matter) in America. 'Picnic' began life as a 17th-century French word: it wasn't even close to being an American invention. A 1692 edition of Origines de la Langue FranÃ§oise de MÃ©nage. mentions 'piquenique' as being of recent origin and marks the first appearance of the word in print.