pumpkin

n. large yellow-orange fruit with tough skin and soft thick flesh; vine that produces this fruit

A pumpkin is a squash fruit that grows as a gourd from a trailing vine of certain species in the genus Cucurbita. Although native to the Western hemisphere, pumpkins are cultivated in North America, continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India and some other countries. Cucurbita species referred to as pumpkins include Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita maxima, Cucurbita mixta, and Cucurbita moschata.
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Noun
1. a coarse vine widely cultivated for its non-keeping large pulpy round orange fruit with firm orange skin and numerous seeds; subspecies of Cucurbita pepo include the summer squashes and a few autumn squashes
(synonym) pumpkin vine, autumn pumpkin, Cucurbita pepo
(hypernym) squash, squash vine
(member-holonym) Cucurbita, genus Cucurbita
2. usually large pulpy deep-yellow round fruit of the squash family maturing in late summer or early autumn
(hypernym) vegetable, veggie
(part-holonym) pumpkin vine, autumn pumpkin, Cucurbita pepo

(n.)
A well-known trailing plant (Cucurbita pepo) and its fruit, -- used for cooking and for feeding stock; a pompion.
  

<jargon> A humourous term for the token - the object (notional or real) that gives its possessor (the "pumpking" or the "pumpkineer") exclusive access to something, e.g. applying patches to a master copy of source (for which the pumpkin is called a "patch pumpkin").
Chip Salzenberg chip@perl.com wrote:
David Croy once told me once that at a previous job, there was one tape drive and multiple systems that used it for backups. But instead of some high-tech exclusion software, they used a low-tech method to prevent multiple simultaneous backups: a stuffed pumpkin. No one was allowed to make backups unless they had the "backup pumpkin".
(1999-02-23)