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rutabaga

/ˈɹutəˌbeɪɡə/noun

rutabaga is a noun meaning “The swede, or Swedish turnip; the European plant Brassica napus var. napobrassica” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-U-T-A-B-A-G-A and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of rutabaga is rutabagas.

What does rutabaga mean?

noun

  1. 1

    CanadaUSThe swede, or Swedish turnip; the European plant Brassica napus var. napobrassica

  2. 2

    CanadaUSThe edible root of this plant

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce rutabaga?

  • US /ˈɹutəˌbeɪɡə/

Rutabaga has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-rutabaga.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of rutabaga

  • rutabagas plural
  • ruta-baga

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is rutabaga?

Rutabaga appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 106,501st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Rutabaga in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchrutabaga, chou-navet (plant)
GermanKohlrübe (plant), schwedische Rübe, Steckrübe (edible root)
Portugueserutabaga (plant), colza, nabo da Suécia, couve-nabiça, couve-nabo (edible root)
Spanishnabo sueco (plant), colinabo (edible root)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does rutabaga come from?

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

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).