Other forms: pumpkins
A pumpkin is the big round orange vegetable people carve faces into. Carve a pumpkin, pumpkin pie, a giant pumpkin.
Carving them at Halloween began with turnips in Ireland and Scotland and moved to pumpkins in America, where they were bigger and easier to cut. Botanically it is a fruit. The record specimens pass a tonne. Note that the word comes through French from a Greek word meaning a large ripe melon.
1nounpumpkinA big round orange vegetable.
“She roasted the pumpkin and turned it into a thick soup.”
pumpkin is a vegetable.
An alteration of pompion, from Middle French, from Latin pepo, from Greek pepon, a large ripe melon.
Proto-Indo-European
*pekʷ-
Ancient Greek
πέπων — large melon
Latin
pepō
Middle French
pompon
English, today
pumpkin
Built from
Alteration of pompion, pumpion (“pumpkin”) with the diminutive -kin, from Middle French pompon, from Latin pepō (whence English pepo), from Ancient Greek πέπων (“large melon”), from πέπων (“ripe”), from πέπτω (“ripen”). The first attestation is from 1647. The alternative theory that it may be from wam pôhpukun (“grows forth round”) is false. The automotive sense is by fancied resemblance.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA