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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

TIL that the English language has two different words for pumpkins. But I'm still not sure when it's a pumpkin and when it's a squash?

Ok, according to Wikipedia:

> A pumpkin is a vernacular term for mature winter squash of species and varieties in the genus Cucurbita that has culinary and cultural significance but no agreed upon botanical or scientific meaning.

So "pumpkin" is the more widespread term (at least that's my feeling?), and it can be applied to all "squashes", but it's not scientifically correct?

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My experience (at least in the US and UK) is the opposite. A pumpkin is a very particular (usually round and orange) type of squash. Squash is the generic term for most of the vegetables (both winter and summer variety) that are eaten.

I've really only seen "Pumpkin" used more commonly in Australia, where I was surprised to see someone refer to what I knew as a butternut squash as a pumpkin.

I have to say I haven't spent a lot of time grocery shopping in English-speaking countries, so my impression is probably skewed by Halloween pumpkins...

When you think of a pumpkin you'll likely envision a particular type of squash, but if you buy canned pumpkin or eat a randomly purchased "pumpkin" pie you're unlikely to be eating the type of squash that you envision.

As per https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/what-is-in-canned-pum... the company responsible for 85% of the world's canned "pumpkin" doesn't actually use the type of squash you're likely envisioning (and links the FDA docs allowing a variety of squash to be labeled as such: https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...), and the type of squash you're likely envisioning having a fairly mediocre flavour relative to the alternatives.

In a sense I think you're both completely right and completely wrong in different ways.

A pumpkin is a specific type of squash. If you can either 1) carve a face into in and set it on your doorstep on Halloween, or 2) bake it into a tasty pie served on Thanksgiving, it's a pumpkin. Also, if it vaguely looks like one of the above mentioned gourds, but is strictly ornamental, you can call it a pumpkin, even though it probably isn't. Otherwise, it's a squash.

I think "pumpkin pies" should actually be made with butternut? much sweeter/tastier

I believe most canned pumpkin that you might buy actually is butternut.

As a child in the 80s UK - a gourd was the commonly used word for all squashes - and gourds were pretty rare to find in a shop. If you saw a gourd it was often an ornamental dried gourd that someone would have as a gift from the states. 'Squash' was a real Americanism, and wasn't wildly used in the people I knew until the late 90s. I remember my bother working as a farm hand an bring some squashes home with hi to eat, and him having to explain them as gourdes to family/neighbours who were interested in how 'ugly' they looked.

Pumpkins were always the orange, large and round ones - and back in the 80s we still carved turnips or swedes in the North of England, as pumpkins were too expensive.

Im from US, and we always had a vegetable garden growing up. Names were much the same from my point of view. Gourds were mostly hard and ornamental, squash is an edible gourd, and they weren’t really too much of a thing until the internet made everything popular.

Being from the US, I’d say a gourd is any “hollow” squash, especially one you don’t normally eat in its normal form. So a pumpkin is both a gourd and a squash. Butternut squash is probably a gourd but definitely not a pumpkin. Zucchini is neither a gourd nor a pumpkin, but is decidedly a squash.

In German, all of the above are simply called "Kürbis" - except for the zucchini, which is a Zucchini...

"Squash" is a broad term referring to many kinds of fruits, including both summer (zucchini, courgette) and winter (Hubbard, acorn, spaghetti, butternut, pumpkin). It's related to cucumbers and loofahs. "Pumpkin" is a particular named variety of winter squash, which varies from region to region. In the USA, "pumpkin" usually refers to a round orange squash with relatively thin flesh and a range of sizes in which the larger ones are carved into "Jack-o-lanterns" in October and put on public display, and the smaller ones are cooked and combined with warm spices such as cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg and baked into pies, cakes, breads, puddings, and half-soy latte grandes. In other regions, pumkins are larger, thicker-flesh squashes of varying sizes and colours.

TL;DR all pumpkins are squash, but not all squash are pumpkins.

Isn't cucumber the green elongated ribbed vegetable that is mostly watery and used in salads, while squash is another word for (a variety) of pumpkin?

Sorry, I wrote cucumber by mistake instead of pumpkin and then edited my comment! (but cucumbers are also from the same family as squashes/pumpkins, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbitaceae)

Wait, really?

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