Word.ws English Dictionary

rutabaga

US/ˈɹutəˌbeɪɡə/

rutabaga noun: the swede, or Swedish turnip; the European plant Brassica napus var. napobrassica.

rutabaga: the swede, or Swedish turnip; the European plant Brassica napus var. napobrassica
Image: pin add, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

rutabaga (usually uncountable, plural rutabagas)

  1. (Canada, US, usually) The swede, or Swedish turnip; the European plant Brassica napus var. napobrassica
    • They were both too hungry to wait for the yams and rutabagas to bake, so tonight they would have the frozen White Castle minicheeseburgers that Mr. Van Buren had won a year's supply of just before he passed away.2007, James Wilcox, Hunk City
  2. (Canada, US, usually) The edible root of this plant
    • Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,
      And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;
      Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none
      Has yet been ours since your reign begun.1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot The Tyrant: A Tragedy in Two Acts
    • Chipper […] understood how his entire dinner might be scarfabl' in no time, his duties discharged and his freedom regained, and he actually picked up his fork and made a pass at the craggy wad of rutabaga […]2001, Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

rutabaga meaning in Tagalog

rutabaga in Tagalog

edible root
nabikol, kolinabo

Synonyms of rutabaga

Forms of rutabaga

pluralrutabagas
alternative formruta-baga

Origin of rutabaga

First attested in 1799, borrowed from Swedish rotabagge, a dialectal word from Västergötland, from rot (“root”) + bagge (“lump, bunch”).

Questions about rutabaga

What does rutabaga mean?
Rutabaga means the swede, or Swedish turnip; the European plant Brassica napus var. napobrassica.
What is rutabaga in Tagalog?
Rutabaga in Tagalog is nabikol, kolinabo. See Rutabaga meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is rutabaga?
Rutabaga is a noun.
How do you pronounce rutabaga?
Rutabaga is pronounced /ˈɹutəˌbeɪɡə/ (US).
What is the plural of rutabaga?
The plural of rutabaga is rutabagas.

Words near rutabaga in the dictionary

  1. rut roh
  2. rut-roh
  3. Ruta
  4. ruta-baga
  5. ruta-bagas
  6. rutabaga
  7. rutabagas
  8. rutaceous
  9. rutaecarpine
  10. rutalean
  11. rutamycin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rutabaga (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-rutabaga.wav.

Cite this entry: “rutabaga.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rutabaga. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.