Everyday LifeGreek → English
Pumpkin
/ˈpʌmpkɪn/noun
A large orange gourd with a thick rind, cooked as a vegetable and carved at Halloween.
The Greek roots
πέπων
pépōn
ripe, sun-cooked
πέπτειν
péptein
to ripen, digest
Literally: “the ripened one”
The story of the word
πέπων means cooked by the sun, so it named a melon eaten ripe rather than picked green. Latin pepo and Old French pompon reached English in the 16th century as pumpion, and the -kin on the end is an English diminutive glued on in America a hundred years later. The plant is American and the name is Greek by way of France; they met only after 1492. The same πέπτειν gives peptic and dyspepsia.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
pepticdyspepsiapepsinmelon
In a sentence
The pumpkin was too heavy for him to carry to the car.
She roasts pumpkin with cumin and eats it all week.