Word.ws English Dictionary

cry carrots and turnips

cry carrots and turnips verb: to be taken through the streets on a cart while being whipped, as a punishment for certain crimes.

Verb

cry carrots and turnips (third-person singular simple present cries carrots and turnips, present participle crying carrots and turnips, simple past and past participle cried carrots and turnips)

  1. (obsolete, slang) To be taken through the streets on a cart while being whipped, as a punishment for certain crimes.
    • I had a mighty queer adventure in communion with that foul toad, Titus Oates, whom I afterwards rejoiced to see crying carrots and turnips, with all London looking on.1895, H. B. Marriott Watson, “Of a Meeting at Fulham”, in The Chap-Book: Semi-Monthly, Chicago, I.L.: Stone & Kimball, page 483

Forms of cry carrots and turnips

third-person singular presentcries carrots and turnips
present participlecrying carrots and turnips
past participlecried carrots and turnips
pastcried carrots and turnips

Origin of cry carrots and turnips

Probably referring to the vegetables which spectators would pelt at the person drawn on the cart. Green's Dictionary of Slang suggests that the term is of onomatopoeic origin.

Questions about cry carrots and turnips

What does cry carrots and turnips mean?
Cry carrots and turnips means to be taken through the streets on a cart while being whipped, as a punishment for certain crimes.
What part of speech is cry carrots and turnips?
Cry carrots and turnips is a verb.
What is the past tense of cry carrots and turnips?
The past tense of cry carrots and turnips is cried carrots and turnips.

Words near cry carrots and turnips in the dictionary

  1. cry babies
  2. cry baby
  3. cry beef
  4. cry blue murder
  5. cry buckets
  6. cry carrots and turnips
  7. cry craven
  8. cry cupboard
  9. cry down
  10. cry for help
  11. cry foul

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cry carrots and turnips (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-cry carrots and turnips.wav.

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