Pecan
/pɪˈkæn/noun
A tree of the walnut family, or its edible, oval nut.
Did you know?Pecan comes through American French and earlier forms in Algonquian languages, where it referred to a nut so hard it had to be cracked with a stone — a reminder that some everyday words carry Indigenous history in plain sight.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Algonquian
PA
*pakan
“a nut that is too hard to crack by hand”
18th Century
French
pacane
“the pecan tree or nut, borrowed from an Indigenous North American language”
18th Century
English
pecan
“the pecan tree or nut, adopted from French usage in North America”
Modern English
English
pecan
“the tree or edible nut of the pecan species”