squash

[David Costa]

> 
> I think we want to be a little careful about reconstructing semantics from
> silverware.  (a) the older meaning is 'gourd' -- squashes come later in the
> archaeological record.  Gourds are used for dippers virtually everywhere.

Perhaps -- but it raises the vexing issue of why every known Algonquian
language but one -- upwards of twenty languages that I could name -- all
made the same semantic shift.  I have no problem thinking that this word
already meant 'spoon, especially made of a gourd' by the Proto-Algonquian
level.