white turnip

2.4

A round white root vegetable that people eat cooked or raw

noun

: nabo blanco

If unavailable, substitute white turnip or daikon radish for the kohlrabi and rutabaga for the black radish.
peeled white turnip

Examples

Peasants brought in wicker baskets overflowing with ripe red apples, white turnips, and dark-green nettles, savory and freshly picked.
Charlotte had an excellent dinner ready: rich mutton stewed with potatoes and sweet white turnip, flavored with rosemary.

Fiction book (1993)
Charlotte had an excellent dinner ready: rich mutton stewed with potatoes and sweet white turnip, flavored with rosemary.

Synonyms

turnip

vswhite turnip

38 1.0

A round root vegetable with white or yellow flesh eaten as food

is specifically the round root with white flesh rather than often yellowish

Surface Forms

white turnip singular

white turnips plural

Morphology

white + turnip

The phrase 'white turnip' is a straightforward adjective + noun composition where the meaning (a turnip that is white) is directly derivable from the constituents 'white' and 'turnip'. This literal, descriptive pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows normal English noun modification, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand it.

Etymology

The name white turnip is a simple, literal name: white shows its color and turnip is the round root vegetable, so people used this phrase to mark the white kind from other turnips. That's why today white turnip means the white root vegetable you cook or eat raw.