“A Pic-Nic Party,” 1846, oil on canvas, by Thomas Cole. Men, women, and children sitting on blankets and eating and drinking in a bucolic setting. One man is playing the guitar.
18 February 2022
(12 September 2023: added discussion of the phrase lynching picnic)
The English word picnic ultimately comes from the French pique-nique, although it may have come via German. The French word originally referred to a meal where everyone paid for or contributed their share of the food, but later came to mean a meal eaten outdoors. The pique comes from the verb piquer, to stick or sting, to bite like an insect. The nique means “nothing whatsoever.” It also had the meaning of a small coin, but that sense had largely disappeared by the time pique-nique was coined in the late seventeenth century. So, a pique-nique would be a light, informal meal, where one would leisurely pick at and nibble food.
But the proximate source for early appearances of the English word may have been the German Picknick, which is also borrowed from the French. And the earliest recorded use of the word in English is in a German context. It is in a 1748 letter by Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, to his son, then living in Dresden. The elder Stanhope makes reference to a picnic his son had attended there:
I like the description of your Pic-nic; where, I take it for granted, that your cards are only to break the formality of a circle, and your Symposion intended more to promote conversation than drinking.
Folklore has the origin of this word as referring to a lynching party for Black people in the American South, deriving from the phrase pick a n[——]r. This is incorrect. The word’s origin is in Europe, has no racial overtones whatsoever, and, as we have seen, long predates the practice of lynching Black people. There are seemingly innocuous words that have racist origins (cf. grandfather clause), but picnic is not one of them.
This idea may have arisen from the existence of the phrase lynching picnic, which is not meant literally. The phrase uses picnic metaphorically to describe a mob; there is no food or drink involved, nor is the term applied exclusively to the lynching of Blacks. The earliest use of lynching picnic that I’m aware of is typical of the phrase’s use. From the Buffalo Evening News of 6 December 1881:
FATHER McCARTHY’S ASSAILANT
Almost a Lynching Picnic in Staid Old Massachusetts
GREENFIELD, Mass., Dec. 7—David McMillen, who shot Rev. Father McCarthy, reached Greenfield at 6.40 [sic] last night in charge of an officer. It was feared that some of the enraged parishioners of Father McCarthy would try to lynch the prisoner, and the train was stopped some 100 rods below the depot and the prisoner, with two officers, was taken into a carriage and driven rapidly to the jail.
Stories about white people picnicking at a lynching are often accompanied by photos of crowds of white men, women, and sometimes children gathered around the hanging corpse of a Black man. The phrase lynching picnic appears in the caption of one such photo published in the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, of 16 August 1930. The photo is of the hanging of two Black men, Thomas Shipp and Abraham Smith, in Marion, Indiana on 7 August 1930. No food or beverages are depicted in the photo. The caption, titled “American Christianity,” reads, in part:
Christian America must know that all the world points with scorn at a country that spends millions to christianize [sic] other countries while at home the barbarians hold their lynching picnic at regular intervals while the nation’s lawmakers sit idly by and offer not one measure to break up the worst crime in the history of the world.
The history of lynching is a horrific chapter in American history, but despite the use of the phrase lynching picnic, the practice of gathering for an outdoor meal has never been strongly associated with murder, nor is there any evidence of white people bringing food and beverages (other than maybe liquor to lower inhibitions against violence) to such murders.
Sources:
“American Christianity” (photo caption). Chicago Defender, 16 August 1930, 1/6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Father McCarthy’s Assailant.” Buffalo Evening News (New York), 6 December 1881, 1/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers. [The article which inexplicably (typo?) bears a dateline of 7 December appears in the 6 December issue of the paper.]
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2006, s.v. picnic, n., adj,, and adv., picnic, v.
Stanhope, Philip. “Letter CLXVII” (29 October 1748). Letters Written by the Late Right Honorable Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to His Son, Philip Stanhope, vol. 2 of 4. London: J. Nichols, et al., 1800, 135. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Image credit: Thomas Cole, 1846. Brooklyn Museum. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work of art.