Pumpkin

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Pumpkin \Pump"kin\, n. [For older pompion, pompon, OF. pompon,
     L. pepo, peponis, Gr. ?, properly, cooked by the sun, ripe,
     mellow; -- so called because not eaten till ripe. Cf. {Cook},
     n.] (Bot.)
     A well-known trailing plant ({Cucurbita pepo}) and its fruit,
     -- used for cooking and for feeding stock; a pompion.


     [1913 Webster]
  
     {Pumpkin seed}.
     (a) The flattish oval seed of the pumpkin.
     (b) (Zool.) The common pondfish.
         [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  pumpkin
       n 1: a coarse vine widely cultivated for its non-keeping large
            pulpy round orange fruit with firm orange skin and
            numerous seeds; subspecies of Cucurbita pepo include the
            summer squashes and a few autumn squashes [syn: {pumpkin
            vine}, {autumn pumpkin}, {Cucurbita pepo}]
       2: usually large pulpy deep-yellow round fruit of the squash
          family maturing in late summer or early autumn

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  pumpkin
       
           A humourous term for the {token} - the object
          (notional or real) that gives its possessor (the "pumpking" or
          the "pumpkineer") exclusive access to something, e.g. applying
          {patches} to a master copy of {source} (for which the pumpkin
          is called a "patch pumpkin").
       
          Chip Salzenberg  wrote:
       
          David Croy once told me once that at a previous job, there was
          one tape drive and multiple systems that used it for backups.
          But instead of some high-tech exclusion software, they used a
          low-tech method to prevent multiple simultaneous backups: a
          stuffed pumpkin.  No one was allowed to make backups unless
          they had the "backup pumpkin".
       
          (1999-02-23)