Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A strong-scented plant (Pastinaca sativa) cultivated for its long, white, edible, fleshy root.
- n. The root of this plant.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- 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
- n. A biennial plant, Pastinaca sativa, related to the carrot.
- n. The root of the parsnip, when used as a vegetable.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) The aromatic and edible spindle-shaped root of the cultivated form of Pastinaca sativa, a biennial umbelliferous plant which is very poisonous in its wild state; also, the plant itself.
WordNet 3.0
- n. whitish edible root; eaten cooked
- n. the whitish root of cultivated parsnip
- n. a strong-scented plant cultivated for its edible root
Etymologies
- 16th century parsnepe, from Middle English passenep, corruption of a borrowing of Old French pasnaie by influence of nepe ("turnip"), from Latin pastinaca ("parsnip, carrot"), from pastinum ("two-pronged fork"); related to pastinare ("to dig up the ground"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English pasnepe, alteration (influenced by nep, turnip) of Old French pasnaie, from Latin pastināca, from pastinum, a kind of two-pronged dibble. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“One thing I noted with the parsnip, is that it starts going brown on the outside before Christmas.”
“Hahahaha, I really can't stop laughing when I type the word parsnip now!”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“And all this in the middle of winter, for the parsnip is the winter root par excellence.”
“It’s just the idea of parsnip in a mulligatawny which I rather balk at.”
“Turnip Transformation: The blue path through this edit graph shows the shortest way to transform "parsnip" into "turnip.”
“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.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘parsnip’.
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henryar's list
marmoleum, menagerie, cyan, ochre, pilfer, discombobulate, loquacious, iridescent, amethyst, derelict, botulism, equilibrium and 240 more...
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food collection
bread, peel, pot, chorizo, Filet, olive, fill, Phyllo, dough, bake, mat, pinot and 988 more...
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pagecrusher's Words
fugu, ilk, rigamarole, superfluous, dearth, sacrosanct, moniker, bifurcate, villainous, onus, brazen, odin and 268 more...
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food words
weetabix, blancmange, shandy, meringue, allspice, pavlova, quiche, caster sugar, suet, moonshine, turnip, swede and 93 more...
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miscellany
extrapolate, effluvium, maelstrom, ecclesiastic, potentiate, prestidigitation, verisimilitude, innocuous, octogenarian, interlocutor, proselytize, ubiquitous and 138 more...
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Fun Food Names
spaghettini, mutton, bratwurst, zabaglione, sweet potato pie, succotash, slumgullion, bouillabaisse, hush puppy, gumbo, jambalaya, mahimahi and 126 more...
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Foodie
As much fun to say as they are to eat.
blueberry, cider, almond, apricot, asparagus, banana, fudge, foldover, flapjacks, filbert, fig, biscuit and 217 more...
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billfence's Words
quotidian, flux, sawbuck, horsefeathers, chalcedony, harp, no, fox, tennis, badminton, flue, charm and 186 more...
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Malachi_Constant's Words
triumverate, pandemic, parsnip, delineate, zamboni, parka, laser, swoop, malevolent, benevolent, fracas, tipsy and 372 more...
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The O.U.P. Junior Dictionary Death Row
Another news story about words being removed from a dictionary before their time. See also the list of words added to the dictionary.
carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe, dwarf, elf, goblin, abbey, aisle, altar, bishop and 137 more...
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wunderkammer's Words
smarmy, bubkes, elucidate, togs, aeolian, carp, kibosh, bosky, ramshackle, mange, harpy, effervesce and 163 more...
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wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
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theastic's Words
cellar, stalemate, wrought, opal, tyrant, squelch, squab, linen, tartan, paisley, scope, siren and 395 more...
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•Open List: I Wonder What Reesetee's ...
macaw, mudhen, squop, flammulated, obsidian, squarehead, parsnip, sprocket, bloviate, fantods
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sputnik
canoodle, span, hasten, discombobulate, sputnik, clod, encrusted, spit-shine, zeitgeist, landslide, laid, cherish and 350 more...
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Wrapped up in books
I'm reading books. And there are words and phrases I come upon for the first time, or that are used with usages that are new to me.
So, this is just a plain list of those words. Don't expect ...hobble, mackerel, crone, cavort, hoyden, rheumy, scatter, hiss, recoil, trundle, shatter, flaxen and 200 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for parsnip.
bilby Some are pests. Mar 27, 2009
sionnach There's that weirdnet paradox again.
A type of exsanguinated carrot. See Bunnicula, the vampire rabbit. Mar 27, 2009
Prolagus See pastinaceous. Sep 8, 2008