Everyone needs vitamin D to build strong bones and teeth. If you rarely go outside, you run the risk of developing a vitamin D deficiency and getting sick with osteoporosis and other bone diseases. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, society resumed its re-examination of how racism informed even the most banal aspects of day-to-day life. This brought up the claim that the word “picnic” is racist. The claim, as seen in this Facebook post, is that the word “picnic” was created by truncating the expression “pick a” followed by a slur for a Black person. When a person was picked, the argument continued, white people would feast while lynching or immolating the Black person.
Despite the historic examples of people having ice cream sundaes after committing such atrocities, the word “picnic” comes from a separate source. That said, there is an uncanny similarity between the lynching theory and the etymology of the word. Etymonline claims that the word picnic comes from the French word “piquenique,” which in turn might be a smashing together of “piquer” and “nique” or “to pick up a worthless thing.” The idea is that you pick at small nibbles at a picnic.
