Wordorigins.org

Picnic comes to us from the French pique-nique. The original French meaning, first appearing in 1694 in the form repas à piquenique, referred to a meal where everyone contributed either food or money, a pot-luck meal. In modern French usage, the term has adopted the English sense of a meal eaten as part of an outing of some sort.

The first element in the French term, pique, is similar to the English pick. Both can mean to eat, in particular to eat in small, dainty mouthfuls. Nique originally had a meaning of nothing and later came to be used to mean a small coin. Undoubtedly chosen because it is reduplicative with pique, it can be interpreted to mean a trifle. So a picnic is a meal of small items or delicacies.

Picnic makes its English appearance in 1748 in a letter by the 4th Earl of Chesterfield:

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.

But English use of picnic did not become widespread until around 1800.

Folklore has the origin of this word as lynching party for blacks in the American South, deriving from the phrase pick an nigger. This is absolutely incorrect. The word’s origin is in Europe, has no racial overtones whatsoever, and, as we have seen, long predates the practice of lynching blacks.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

In standard English, piccaninny is a derogatory word for a black child. In some dialects, specifically some Caribbean dialects, the word does not have the derogatory connotation and can even be a term of endearment, but this is not the case in standard English.

This word is a West Indian variation on the Portuguese pequenino, meaning boy or child and in older use meaning small or tiny. The Portuguese word is cognate with the Spanish pequeño. The word entered the West Indian vocabulary via Portuguese trading pidgins that were common in the Caribbean of the 17th century.

English use of the word dates to the mid-17th century. There is this from 1653, published in Notes & Queries in 1905, referring to workers, presumably slaves, in Barbados:

Some women, whose pickaninnies are three yeares old, will, as they worke at weeding...suffer the hee Pickaninnie, to sit astride upon their backs.

By the early 19th century, the term had spread to Australia and New Zealand where it was used to refer to Aboriginal and Maori children. From the Sydney Gazette of 4 January 1817:

Governor,—that will make good Settler—that’s my Pickaninny!

And from J.L. Nicholas’s Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand, also from 1817:

This fellow...met me...telling me that Mrs. King had got a pickeeninnee, (a child,) he began to describe her groans...while...under the pains of labour.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

This is an American slang word of that dates to the late 19th century. It probably comes from fawney, a slang term of earlier vintage, which in turn is from the Irish fáine, or ring. Fawney also lent its name to a confidence game, referred to as the fawney rig or going on the fawney. From George Parker’s 1781 A View of Society and Manners in High and Low Life:

There is a large shop in London where these kind of rings are sold, for the purpose of going on the Fawney.

The Florida vote-counting debacle during the 2000 US presidential election brought the rather obscure and obsolescent word chad to the attention of the public. A chad is that bit of paper left behind when punch cards and paper tape are perforated. Since by 2000 most of the computing world had abandoned punch cards and paper tape, the term had fallen out of use except in specialized applications such as voting.

The origin of the word is unknown. There are several possibilities and a couple of commonly touted explanations that are almost certainly false. While chads have been with us since the automated machinery was introduced into 18th century textile mills at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the word chad itself is relatively new and the name appears toward the end of the technology’s life cycle.

A sawbuck is a ten-dollar bill. These bills used to have two large roman numeral tens ("X") on their reverse side, resembling the scaffold for a sawbuck or sawhorse. From The Knickerbocker magazine of 1850:

Send me the two double “saw-bucks.”

Sawbuck is not known to be related to buck, meaning a dollar, but the possibility cannot be dismissed. They certainly influenced one another in any case.

(Source:Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

Buck, the slang term for a dollar, almost certainly is a clipped form of buckskin; buckskins being used as units of commerce on the American frontier. We can see the semantic development in the following citations.

From James Buchanan’s 1824 Sketches of the History, Manners, and Customs of North American Indians:

Each buck-skin one dollar.

Phat is a slang spelling of fat, originating and common among African-Americans. It has come to the attention of standard English speakers relatively recently, but like many such slang terms of a subpopulation it is much older than those outside of the subgroup. Time magazine records it as early as 2 August 1963:

Negro argot...Mellow, phat, stone, boss. General adjectives of approval.

Given the source, we can safely assume that phat was in slang use at least as far back as the 1950s. Its recent appearance in mainstream publications and writing is largely due to crossover from Hip-Hip into mainstream American culture.

Phat is also a word that frequently is given a false acronymic origin. The exact acronym varies with the telling, Pretty Hot And Tempting, Pretty Hips And Thighs, and Pussy Hips Ass Tits have all been suggested. There is no evidence supporting any acronymic origin.

Rather, phat is most likely simply a slang respelling of fat. Such respellings are common in slang. And fat has a long history of meaning rich, abundant, or desirable. Fat has been used this way in English since the early 17th century, and in other languages for far longer. The specific sexual connotation of phat is likely just a specialization of the general meaning. Some suggest it may be a clipping of emphatic. Again, there is no evidence for this last, but at least it’s more plausible than any of the acronymic origins.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

Unless you follow the sport of cycling, you are not likely to run across the word peloton, which means a group of cyclists, usually the main mass of cyclists in the race.

Peloton is a French word. It’s literal meaning is little ball and in this sense it dates to the early 15th century in French.

By 1616 the French were using the word to mean a small group of soldiers, presumably because a small group of soldiers in tight formation resembled a ball. The word platoon is a variant of peloton, appearing as ploton in Middle French by 1572 and as plauton by 1611.

Platoon was the first form to be borrowed into English. From Robert Monro’s 1637 His Expedition With The Worthy Scots Regiment Called Mac-keyes:

Eight Corporall-ships of Musketiers, being thirty-two Rots divided in foure Plottons, every Plotton being eight in front, led off by a Captaine.

We see the -oon ending by 1687, when John Dryden uses it in his translation of Louis Maimbourg’s History of the League:

Thus was the Royal Army Marshall’d, which consisted of betwixt 9 and 10000 Foot, and 2800 Horse, divided into seven Squadrons, each of them with a Plotoon of Forlorn Hope before them.

By 1734 the modern spelling of platoon was in use.

The military sense of peloton made the jump to English a bit later, by the beginning of the 18th century. A Military and Sea Dictionary of 1702 cross-references it with the word platoon. And there is this from Nicholas Tindal’s 1744 translation of Rapin de Thoyras’ History of England:

Before he suffered any peloton of his battalion to discharge.

As for cycling, the French were using peloton in the cycling sense by 1884 and this sense had transferred over to English by the mid-20th century. From Cycling magazine of 12 July 1939:

A prominent worker at the head of the peloton throughout the race.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

A peanut is the seed of Arachis hypogaea, native to Brazil. The origin of the name is obvious, a compounding of pea + nut. Although, technically a peanut is not a nut, but actually a legume. The name appears by the beginning of the 19th century. From a letter by Washington Irving published in the Morning Chronicle on 1 December 1802:

I amused myself with eating pea-nuts.

Peanut is also a slang term for a simple or inconsequential person or for a child. From an 1864 work by Mark Twain, published in Early Tales & Sketches:

I am no peanut...I could invent some little remedies that would stir up a commotion,...if I chose to try.

Peanut gallery refers to the balcony section of a theater—presumably from hoi polloi eating peanuts in the cheap seats. From the Mountain Democrat of Placerville, California of 10 June 1876:

As a bid for applause from the political pit and peanut gallery it was a masterpiece.

The term was popularized in the 1950s by the television show Howdy Doody, in which the host, Buffalo Bob, would call the child audience the peanut gallery. In doing so, Buffalo Bob was combining two different slang traditions.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

This phrase dates to the 17th century. From Giovanni Torriano’s 1666 Piazza Universale:

Oft-times rich men engrossing commodities, will make one pay through the nose, whereas they might sell the cheaper.

The underlying metaphor is a bit mysterious. It may be from the idea of bleeding through the nose.

There is another 17th century slang term for money, rhino. In Greek, of course, rhino means nose. It seems logical that these two are connected, but what significance a nose has with money is simply not known. From Thomas Shadwell’s 1688 The Squire of Alsatia where rhino is used for money and rhinocerical for rich:

The Ready, the Rhino; thou shalt be rhinocerical, my Lad.

Popular folklore has it that this phrase dates back to 9th century Ireland. Viking raiders would demand tribute from the local Irish and slit open the noses of anyone who refused to pay. I do not know whether not Vikings were among the first to practice this crude form of rhinoplasty, but it is most definitely not the origin of the phrase. Eight hundred years of an underground existence is just too long to be plausible.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd & 3rd Editions)