Thanksgiving Vocabulary: A Warm Mix of Food, Family, and a Bit of French History

Every year, as Thanksgiving approaches, I feel a familiar mixture of nostalgia and anticipation. It has always been one of my favourite holidays. Not because of grand traditions or religious symbolism — quite the opposite. Thanksgiving is beautifully simple: a holiday about gathering, eating, and appreciating the people around you. It’s a celebration shared in both the United States and Canada, and for many of us, its vocabulary carries a surprising amount of history, warmth, and even a little French influence.

As I often tell my learners in my English courses in Vincennes, language is never just vocabulary — it’s culture, migration, borrowing, storytelling, and the memory of who passed a word to whom. Thanksgiving offers a perfect example.

When English and French Meet at the Table

Take the word “feast.” Today it evokes a huge celebratory meal — and Thanksgiving certainly qualifies — but it comes directly from Old French feste, ancestor of the modern fête. When English absorbed this word centuries ago, it kept the joy, the celebration, and even the sense of community.

The same thing happened with “tradition” and “celebration.” Learners often smile when they discover these familiar-looking words came into English through French influence long after the Norman Conquest. Even “gratitude”, a central emotion of Thanksgiving, has a French cousin in gratitude, keeping its Latin roots alive in both languages.

One holiday, two languages, shared history on a single plate.

The Food Words: A Delicious Crossroads

Thanksgiving food vocabulary is an unexpected linguistic adventure. Consider “turkey.” The English name mistakenly ties the bird to Turkey, while the French dinde mistakenly ties it to India (poule d’Inde). Two different continents, two different errors — yet both languages kept the mistake, turning it into tradition.

Stuffing hides another surprise. The verb to stuff comes from Old French estoffe, meaning “filling” or “material.” The Thanksgiving dish still carries that old French notion of putting something inside.

Even gravy, that essential sauce we pour over mashed potatoes, seems connected to Old French cooking terms. Meanwhile pumpkin traces one of its earlier forms to French pompon. And casserole, of course, is proudly and unapologetically French.

This is why many of my students — whether they follow my E-learning lessons, my online sessions, or my English courses supported by the CPF — enjoy discovering the meal as much as the vocabulary.

Around the Table: Expressions That Bring the Scene to Life

Once the meal begins, the language shifts to warmth and sharing.Expressions like:

• “Could you pass the…?”

• “Do you want seconds?”

• “I’m stuffed!”

These are the small, human sentences that create the soundtrack of the evening.

Even “to carve the turkey” has French roots — the verb shares ancestry with old terms related to cutting and shaping. The language of Thanksgiving is gentle, generous, and wonderfully alive.

A Taste of Practice

When students work with me in my English course with CPF in Vincennes, I encourage them to try vocabulary in short, real sentences rather than memorising lists. For example:

• “Every year, we prepare a big feast.”

• “My uncle carves the turkey.”

• “We always have plenty of leftovers.”

Vocabulary breathes better when it’s connected to memory, emotion, and culture — and Thanksgiving gives us all three.

What Thanksgiving Teaches Us About Language

In the end, Thanksgiving is more than a holiday. It’s a story about families, migrations, borrowed words, shared meals, and traditions that evolve. Its vocabulary reflects a long history between English and French, a history I see come to life every day in my classroom in Vincennes and in my online lessons.

And of course, like any good Thanksgiving celebration… it always comes back to food.

So tell me — which dish would you bring to the table?