If you go down to the woods today...

Despite what you may have heard about “picnic” being a racist term having something to do with lynching, it is in fact a perfectly innocuous word derived from the French verb piquer (to peck at) and nique(something of little value). It came into English in the mid 1700s, referring to a European custom that is essentially what we would call a potluck dinner. The outdoor element came to be the defining factor only about a century later (and seems to have been an English invention).