Skirret

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A root vegetable closely related to carrots, typically cultivated for its edible tubers and featured in various cuisines
2. An herbaceous plant yielding sweet roots that are commonly harvested and used in culinary dishes, often found in home gardens
3. A plant grown for its sweet, edible roots resembling thick, white carrots, often used in cooking

Etymology: The skirret is a plant whose name is a little joke about sugar. Its roots were once a prized sweet vegetable in European gardens, and the English name was borrowed from Dutch "suikerwortel", which literally means "sugar-root". The Dutch compound pairs "suiker", sugar, with "wortel", root, and English took the whole thing over with only a slight reshaping of its sound. The vegetable itself is a water-parsnip relative, and its pale, clustered roots were eaten as a sweet alternative to the carrots and parsnips that later displaced it. The name tells you what gardeners valued about it: the taste was the point, and the plant was known by it.