carrot

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English[edit]

English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Carrots
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Etymology[edit]

From Middle English karette and Middle French carotte, both from Latin carōta, from Ancient Greek καρῶτον (karôton). Doublet of carotte and related to caraway. Displaced native Old English mōre.

  • Noun sense of "motivational tool" refers to carrot and stick.
  • Verb sense in felt manufacture refers to the orange colour of drying furs.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

carrot (countable and uncountable, plural carrots)

  1. A vegetable with a nutritious, juicy, sweet root that is often orange in colour, Daucus carota, especially the subspecies sativus in the family Apiaceae.
  2. A shade of orange similar to the flesh of most carrots (also called carrot orange).
    carrot:  
  3. (figuratively) Any motivational tool; an incentive to do something.
    • 2022 August 7, Coral Davenport; Lisa Friedman, “Five Decades in the Making: Why It Took Congress So Long to Act on Climate”, in The New York Times[1], →ISSN:
      Essentially, lawmakers replaced the sticks with carrots.
  4. (UK, slang, derogatory) Someone from a rural background.
  5. (UK, slang) A police officer from somewhere within the British Isles, but specifically outside of Greater London.
  6. (slang) A redhead; a ginger-haired person

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Verb[edit]

carrot (third-person singular simple present carrots, present participle carroting, simple past and past participle carroted)

  1. (transitive) To treat (an animal pelt) with a solution of mercuric nitrate as part of felt manufacture.

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