beet
Americannoun
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beets
plural
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any of various biennial plants belonging to the genus Beta, of the amaranth family, especially B. vulgaris, having a fleshy red or white root.
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the edible root of such a plant.
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the leaves of such a plant, served as a salad or cooked vegetable.
noun
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any chenopodiaceous plant of the genus Beta , esp the Eurasian species B. vulgaris , widely cultivated in such varieties as the sugar beet, mangelwurzel, beetroot, and spinach beet See also chard
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the leaves of any of several varieties of this plant, which are cooked and eaten as a vegetable
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the US name for beetroot
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of beet
First recorded before 1000; Middle English bete, Old English bēte, from Latin bēta
Explanation
A beet is a reddish-purple colored root vegetable. You can roast beets, slice them, and add them to a salad. When you peel a cooked beet, your fingers will be temporarily stained red. Beets are distinctive for their deep color and their round shape — though there are also a few varieties that are yellow. You can eat both the round, fleshy part of a beet plant and also its green leaves. The British version of beet, which is thought to have a Celtic origin, is beetroot.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
We head to outdoor restaurants where no one is present and the eager wait staff want to feed her bacon and me, my beet salad.
From Salon ● May 9, 2026
Next month, she said, organizers plan to honor the Japanese-Mexican Labor Assn., a union formed by sugar beet workers in 1903 that conducted a 48-day farmworker strike 123 years ago, long before Chavez.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 19, 2026
In the U.S., at one time the world’s leader in the making of maple syrup, production plummeted in the 20th century as the country’s population became more urban, and cane and beet sugar less expensive.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 24, 2025
Mr Hoyles, who is growing the olives alongside more conventional crops such as wheat, sugar beet, potatoes and peas said he had installed wind turbines and solar panels to improve energy self-sufficiency.
From BBC ● Dec. 16, 2025
The blind man smiled, loosened a beet from the earth, and placed it in the basket of vegetables.
From "Messenger" by Lois Lowry
Researchers figured out how to make convincing replicas of its red, orange and yellow candies using natural ingredients like beets and turmeric.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
They’re vegetarians: They eat grass, alfalfa, cassava, sweet potato, carrots, beets, and, at the zoo, a commercial feed.
From Slate ● May 27, 2026
Abatti, 63, owns a large farming operation in the Imperial Valley, growing crops including sugar beets, alfalfa and melons.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 1, 2026
Betaine is a small molecule found in foods like beets and spinach, but the body also makes it on its own.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 13, 2025
Crops starting out as weeds included rye and oats, turnips and radishes, beets and leeks, and lettuce.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
