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A picnic is an excursion at which a meal is eaten outdoors (al fresco or ''en plein air''), ideally taking place in a beautiful landscape such as a park, beside a lake or with an interesting view and possibly at a public event such as before an open-air theatre performance, and usually in summer. Descriptions of picnics show that the idea of a meal that was jointly contributed and was enjoyed out-of-doors were essential to a picnic from the early 19th century.〔Mary Ellen W. Hern, "Picnicking in the Northeastern United States, 1840-1900", ''Winterthur Portfolio'' 24.2/3 (Summer - Autumn 1989), pp. 139–152.〕 Picnics are often family-oriented but can also be an intimate occasion between two people or a large get-together such as company picnics and church picnics. It is also sometimes combined with a cookout, usually a form of barbecue; either grilling (griddling, gridironing, or charbroiling), braising (by combining a charbroil or gridiron grill with a broth-filled pot), baking, or a combination of all of the above. On romantic and family picnics, a picnic basket and a blanket (to sit or recline on) are usually brought along. Outdoor games or some other form of entertainment are common at large picnics. In established public parks, a picnic area generally includes picnic tables and possibly other items related to eating outdoors, such as built-in grills, water faucets, garbage containers, and restrooms. Some picnics are a potluck, an entertainment at which each person contributed some dish to a common table for all to share. When the picnic is not also a cookout, the food eaten is rarely hot, instead taking the form of deli sandwiches, finger food, fresh fruit, salad, cold meats and accompanied by chilled wine or champagne or soft drinks. ==Etymology== The first usage of the word is traced to the 1692 edition of Tony Willis, ''Origines de la Langue Française'', which mentions ''pique-nique'' as being of recent origin; it marks the first appearance of the word in print. The term was used to describe a group of people dining in a restaurant who brought their own wine. The concept of a picnic long retained the connotation of a meal to which everyone contributed something. Whether ''picnic'' is actually based on the verb ''piquer'' which means 'pick' or 'peck' with the rhyming ''nique'' meaning "thing of little importance" is doubted; the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' says it is of unknown provenance. The word ''picnic'' first appeared in English in a letter of the Gallicized Lord Chesterfield in 1748 (''OED''), who associates it with card-playing, drinking and conversation, and may have entered the English language from this French word.〔The German ''Picknick'' , not part of Lord Chesterfield's cultural sphere, may simply be a parallel borrowing from the French word, ''pique-nique''.〕 The practice of an elegant meal eaten out-of-doors, rather than a harvester worker's dinner in the harvest field, was connected with respite from hunting from the Middle Ages; the excuse for the pleasurable outing of 1723 in François Lemoyne's painting (''illustration, left'') is still offered in the context of a hunt. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「picnic」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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