The cucurbita maxima.

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1801.  

        So pretty a neck, I’ll be bound,
Never join’d head and body together,
Like a crooked neck’d squash on the ground,
Long whiten’d by winter-like weather.
The Port Folio, i. 264 (Phila.).    

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1818.  Upwards of ten tons of the best crook-necked winter Squashes.—Mass. Spy, Nov. 11.

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1841.  Over the fire-place were our crooked-necked squashes.—‘Lowell Offering,’ i. 79.

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1848.  

        Agin’ the chimbly crooknecks hung,
  An’ in amongst ’em rusted
The ole queen’s-arm thet gran’ther Young
  Fetched back frum Concord busted.
J. R. Lowell, ‘The Courtin’.’    

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1856.  The flare of the flames at intervals disclosed, pendent from the joists, hams, dried pumpkins, crook-necks, and the usual comforts of rural life, besides some hunter’s trappings, and a long rifle, kept clean and bright, as the glisten of its mounting testified.—Knick. Mag., xlvii. 148 (Feb.).

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1860.  Patrick goes off contented, for he knows that the weeds will grow with the potatoes, the vines must be planted, next week, and however unwilling you may be, the canteloupes, crooknecks and cucumbers will send for him.—Emerson, ‘The Conduct of Life, Wealth,’ p. 66. (N.E.D.)

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