jack-o'-lantern

📅 Updated:2018-02-10

🕒 Created:2017-09-12

🆔 ID:17651

Description

A jack-o'-lantern is a hollowed-out pumpkin with a face or picture carved or marked on its rind. Typically associated with Halloween, many are meant to be lit from within, often by candle.

Originally, the term "jack-o'-lantern" referred to a night watchman or a man with a lantern and then with will-o'-the-wisp. Jack-o'-lanterns were carved from various vegetables like the turnip, but immigrants to North America took to using the larger and easier to carve pumpkin instead. Jack-o'-lanterns were once associated with the harvest and didn't get matched with Halloween until the 1860s.