carrot

English
Carrots

Wikispecies

Etymology

From Middle English karette and Middle French carotte, both from Latin carōta, from Ancient Greek καρῶτον (karôton). Doublet of carotte and related to caraway. Displaced native Old English mōre.

  • Noun sense of "motivational tool" refers to carrot and stick.
  • Verb sense in felt manufacture refers to the orange colour of drying furs.

Pronunciation

Noun

carrot (countable and uncountable, plural carrots)

  1. A vegetable with a nutritious, juicy, sweet root that is often orange in colour, Daucus carota, especially the subspecies sativus in the family Apiaceae.
  2. A shade of orange similar to the flesh of most carrots (also called carrot orange).
    carrot:  
  3. (figurative) Any motivational tool; an incentive to do something.
    • 2022 August 7, Coral Davenport; Lisa Friedman, “Five Decades in the Making: Why It Took Congress So Long to Act on Climate”, in The New York Times‎, ISSN 0362-4331:
      Essentially, lawmakers replaced the sticks with carrots.
  4. (UK, slang, derogatory) Someone from a rural background.
  5. (UK, slang) A police officer from somewhere within the British Isles, but specifically outside of Greater London.
  6. (slang) A redhead; a ginger-haired person

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations

See also

References
  • carrot in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Verb

carrot (third-person singular simple present carrots, present participle carroting, simple past and past participle carroted)

  1. (transitive) To treat (an animal pelt) with a solution of mercuric nitrate as part of felt manufacture.

Derived terms

Anagrams
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