Word.ws English Dictionary

turnip for the book

turnip for the book noun: a very unexpected surprise or occurrence.

Noun

turnip for the book

  1. (humorous) A very unexpected surprise or occurrence.
    • You've got these Swedes in your office—that was a turnip for the books. Do go on.1974, Gordon Williams, Big Morning Blues, London […]: Hodder and Stoughton, →ISBN, page 102
    • Swedes fired arrows into their corpses, though we don't know why. (This is better than corpses firing arrows into swedes which would be a real turnip for the book.)1999, Terry Deary, The Savage Stone Age, London: Hippo, →ISBN, page 43

Forms of turnip for the book

alternative formturnip for the books

Origin of turnip for the book

A humorous variation on turn up for the book.

Questions about turnip for the book

What does turnip for the book mean?
Turnip for the book means a very unexpected surprise or occurrence.
What part of speech is turnip for the book?
Turnip for the book is a noun.

Words near turnip for the book in the dictionary

  1. turnip
  2. turnip cake
  3. turnip cakes
  4. turnip flies
  5. turnip fly
  6. turnip for the book
  7. turnip for the books
  8. turnip greens
  9. turnip head
  10. turnip heads
  11. turnip moth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turnip for the book (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-turnip for the book.wav.

Cite this entry: “turnip for the book.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/turnip_for_the_book. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.