means A large, round, orange-fleshed gourd of the squash family, eaten in pies and carved into faces every autumn.

from From the older English 'pompion,' borrowed from French 'pompon,' which traces back through Latin 'pepo' to the Greek 'pepon' — a melon, literally something 'ripened' or 'cooked' by the sun. English speakers later swapped the ending for the diminutive '-kin,' and the modern 'pumpkin' was born. The plant itself, though, is a New World native — Greeks and Romans named the word long before anyone outside the Americas had ever met the actual squash.