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).
例文
1. I took the kids for a picnic in the park after school.
放課後、私は子供たちを公園に連れてピクニックに行きました。
2.They were tidying up the remains of their picnic .
彼らはピクニックの後に残ったものを片付けている。
3.We punted up towards Grantchester and had a picnic in a meadow.
私たちは平底長船に乗ってグランチェスターに遡り、芝生でピクニックをした。
4.Primrose was given an apple，left over from our picnic lunch.