Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A European plant (Brassica napus var. napobrassica) having a thick bulbous root used as food and as livestock feed.
- n. The edible root of this plant.
Wiktionary
Etymologies
- 1799, from Swedish rotabagge, a dialectal word from Västergötland, from rot (“root”) + bagge (“bag”). (Wiktionary)
- Swedish dialectal rotabagge : rot, root (from Old Norse rōt; see wrād- in Indo-European roots) + bagge, bag (from Old Norse baggi). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I have read that the rutabaga is a scottish turnip, though it is certainly found elsewhere, and found in the same places as ordinary turnips.”
“I would, however, just like to make the additional point that the flesh of the rutabaga is a lovely pale orange color; it is pretty on the inside.”
“I think a rutabaga is what, in England, we called a swede - yellowish, large root vegetable - good mashed with lots of butter.”
“In the form of "neeps" (mashed with butter), rutabaga is a traditional companion of the often derided haggis.”
“The rutabaga is known also as the Swedish or Russian turnip.”
“What is called a rutabaga in California is sometimes called a yellow turnip in other parts of the country.”
“There are four, five months out of the year, where a rutabaga is the best thing you're going to see.”
“As for the rutabaga, that is more important than the coffee.”
“Neuroscientists call the rutabaga gene a coincidence detector because it codes for an enzyme whose activity levels get a big boost when a fly perceives two stimuli that it has to learn to associate with one another.”
“Both types of trace, the team discovered, depend on the activity of a gene called rutabaga, of which humans also have a similar version.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘rutabaga’.
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Americanism
American words
finest, fast food, acclimate, aluminum, alphabetize, airplane, affirmative action, arugula, backhoe, bangs, base board, bayou and 162 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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Turnips
turnip, Turnip, turnips, Turnips, Go tell it to the..., Swedish turnip, turnip greens, baby turnips, turnip-tops, turnip-fly, Indian turnip, lion's-turnip and 25 more...
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one-word band names
please make up a new one-word band and post it to this list. thanks!
figgles, crumbuggers, forgs, fargles, forbes, meemaws, mime-osas, merkins, cadaver, karl, roombas, prudishals and 16 more...
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Fun to say
These are the words you want to say for no reason besides how lovely they feel to come out of your mouth. Sometimes you even say them when no one is around.
toast, bleat, uvula, onomatopoeia, krackalackin, welt, pfefferkuchen, bahookie, clamjamfry, dint, kikiriki, rutabaga and 19 more...
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Gas-Inducing Foodstuffs
Foods that produce flatulence. List title a shameless filching of a fortuitous phrase yarb introduced in his definition of scotch egg. I know everyone has a few foods they avoid at certain times ...
scotch egg, cabbage, chili beans, garbanzo beans, chickpeas, hummus, pickled eggs, rutabaga, radish, jerusalem artichoke, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and 42 more...
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Cruciferous Vegetables
The GNU Webster's 1913 tells us that the second meaning for cruciferous is as follows: "Of, pertaining to, or resembling, a family of plants which have four petals arranged like the arms of a cross...
broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, rutabaga, mustard, radish, turnip, arugula, watercress, horseradish and 29 more...
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fredrx's beautiful sounding list
two most beautiful words when put together
womb, philistine, poignant, wombastic, eschelon, macabre, precipitous, panache, misogynist, placebo, cacophony, aplomb and 43 more...
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Putting down roots
root beer, crinkleroot, root canal, root cellar, roothold, rootlet, rootworm, Stephen Root, square root, snakeroot, arrowroot, scrootch and 64 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
grabbable, retuiteando, leaving, fantastic, absolutely, kurwa, hella, ridic, underpass, hate, interlude, plush and 2369 more... -
ShuckFinn's Words
abecedarian, conflate, mondegreen, whit, truculent, downright, pugnacious, effluvium, canker, inveigle, obfuscate, melancholy and 227 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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minneapolitan's Words
hissyfit, fussbudget, aghast, lament, trichinellosis, tranche, decadent, aspersion, pejorative, aniline, galoshes, accede and 200 more...
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tree's Words
aphasia, anhedonia, promontory, misandry, amanuensis, asymptote, penultimate, muslin, tundra, calico, kinaesthesia, rutabaga and 209 more...
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the gardener and apothecary's
bryony, chamomile, frond, sweet bay, laurel, monkshood, henbane, hemlock, parsley, rosemary, thyme, lady's mantle and 140 more...
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Wenderful's Whirled World of Blurred ...
Lexicon I likez... in no order whatsoever.
omnivalence, cerebration, sprachgefühl, schadenfreude, rutabaga, septuagenarian, foible, vainglorious, leviathan, remunerative, catastrophize, ancillary and 182 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for rutabaga.

fbharjo My dog's name (collie-poodle) - coldle or poolie- in the 1970s. we called him Rudy Aug 23, 2011
yarb God, I could murder a good swede right now. *rubs tummy* Jul 23, 2009
plutoman And it went downhill from there. Yanks 2, Planks 0 if I remember rightly.
They're swedes in NZ too, by the way. Jul 23, 2009
bilby Reminds me of that infamous sports headline after the English football team lost to Sweden in a game they were favoured to win. Sweden played well of course but the English were a shambles. As the defeat eliminated England from the 1992 European Championship, the press were bristling:
Swedes 2, Turnips 1. Mar 17, 2009
chained_bear I'm confused. Why is it a swede? What connection, yarb? *feels very dense*
*realizes it must be that McGangbang* Mar 17, 2009
punky Wow, really? That's wild - I am Canadian and I've never heard it referred to as a 'swede' either. Mar 17, 2009
sionnach Every rutabaga is a swede. But not every Swede is a rutabaga, regardless of the level of docility.
See ballistic root vegetables. Mar 16, 2009
yarb Known in the UK as a swede. I finally made the connection just the other day after five years of vainly trying to convey the concept to bewildered Canadians.
Yummy. Mar 16, 2009