This one spreads as a shocking truth-bomb, usually in a chain email or a viral post: the word picnic supposedly comes from racist lynching gatherings in the American South, where white families brought baskets of food to 'pick a' Black man to hang. People share it to sound informed, and because the horror makes it feel important not to question.
The word is French and far older than any American context. 'Pique-nique' appears in French in the 1600s, describing a meal where each guest brings a dish or pays their share. It entered English by the early 1800s, well before the lynching era the myth invokes, and originally referred to a fashionable indoor potluck, not even an outdoor meal. There is no etymological path to the violent phrase, and the words involved do not match. Snopes and standard dictionaries trace it cleanly. The lynching myth is real in the sense that the atrocities were real, which is exactly why the false origin sticks. It feels disrespectful to fact-check something attached to genuine horror. Check it anyway. The word is innocent, and getting history right is not the same as excusing it.