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:
Proponents say French sugar beet, apple and hazelnut farmers need the insecticides -- forbidden in France since 2018 and 2019 respectively -- to help them compete with their European counterparts.
From Barron's ● Jul. 21, 2026
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
Food companies started replacing it with cane or beet sugar more than a decade ago.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 14, 2026
The rice field is surrounded by potato, onion and beet crops, which are still the thriving staples here.
From BBC ● Sep. 27, 2025
“It’s just Alan,” he says, face red as a boiled beet.
From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland
We experienced this firsthand at the Lighthouse Hotel, where the standard breakfast was a plate of shredded boiled beets piled high, which we dubbed “beet mountain.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 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
He owns a large farming operation that grows sugar beets, alfalfa and melons and is one of the largest operators in the area.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 29, 2025
In the same central train stations of that city, old women then sold carrots and beets from cardboard boxes they had lugged from their country homes.
From Salon ● Dec. 3, 2025
I paid very low prices for peaches, carrots, and beets.
From "Fever 1793" by Laurie Halse Anderson
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.
