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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A strong-scented plant (Pastinaca sativa) cultivated for its long, white, edible, fleshy root.
  2. n. The root of this plant.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A biennial plant, Peucedanum (Pastinaca) sativum, native through temperate Europe and part of Asia, and widely cultivated in gardens, thence again running wild. It is an erect plant with pinnate leaves and bright-yellow flowers, having a tap-root which in the wild plant is hard and inedible, even somewhat poisonous, but under culture becomes fleshy, palatable, and nutritious, and has been used as food from ancient times. It contains sugar, and a wine is made from it. and with hops a kind of beer. It is a valuable fodder-plant, surpassing the carrot in milk-producing quality. Varieties of the parsnip are the common or Dutch, the hollow-crowned or cup, the Guernsey, the round or turnip, and the student; the last was developed directly from the wild parsnip in experimental cultivation.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A biennial plant, Pastinaca sativa, related to the carrot.
  2. n. The root of the parsnip, when used as a vegetable.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. The aromatic and edible spindle-shaped root of the cultivated form of the Pastinaca sativa, a biennial umbelliferous plant which is very poisonous in its wild state; also, the plant itself.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. whitish edible root; eaten cooked
  2. n. the whitish root of cultivated parsnip
  3. n. a strong-scented plant cultivated for its edible root

Etymologies

  1. Middle English pasnepe, alteration (influenced by nep, turnip) of Old French pasnaie, from Latin pastināca, from pastinum, a kind of two-pronged dibble.

Examples

  • “One thing I noted with the parsnip, is that it starts going brown on the outside before Christmas.”

    Growing winter vegetables

  • “Hahahaha, I really can't stop laughing when I type the word parsnip now!”

    sheepdip Diary Entry

  • “The water-parsnip, which is poisonous, is said to be sometimes gathered for watercress; but the palate must be dull, one would think, to eat it, and the smell is a sure test.”

    Round About a Great Estate

  • “CHEF Ben Moss is used to being known as a 'parsnip', a name he's had since he started his vegetarian cookery company The Parsnipship nearly five years ago.”

    WalesOnline - Home

  • “Before the fabulous albino root known as the parsnip disappears, I thought I would send along a recipe that is easy to make, although it takes a while to bake.”

    Everydaystranger

  • “So I've decided to allow one parsnip, which is a biennial, to go to seed this year, just so I can observe its natural cycle.”

    Garden Rant

  • “And all this in the middle of winter, for the parsnip is the winter root par excellence.”

    The Guardian World News

  • “It’s just the idea of parsnip in a mulligatawny which I rather balk at.”

    Chris Neill's Dirty Kitchen

  • “Turnip Transformation: The blue path through this edit graph shows the shortest way to transform "parsnip" into "turnip.”

    DevX: Latest Published Articles

  • “Opened just two years ago on Thanksgiving Day, they will again offer a three-course meal including dishes such as parsnip soup, blackened rib-eye steak and pecan maple tart.”

    Londonist

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‘parsnip’ has been looked up 2437 times, loved by 1 person, added to 32 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 11.