carrot

noun

car·rot | \ˈker-ət,

ˈka-rət\

Definition of carrot

1 : a biennial herb (Daucus carota of the family Umbelliferae, the carrot family) with a usually orange spindle-shaped edible root also : its root

2 : a reward or advantage offered especially as an inducement The company offered a carrot in the form of additional vacation time to workers who met their deadlines.

Examples of carrot in a Sentence

She chopped some carrots for the soup. He added some grated carrot to the soup. The company offered a carrot in the form of additional vacation time to workers who met their deadlines.

Recent Examples on the Web

Turn off heat and add ham hock, with its fattiest side up, to the pot, then surround it with the carrots and onion. — Bethany Jean Clement, The Seattle Times, "Taking stock: The story of an accidental, excellent post-Thanksgiving recipe," 14 Nov. 2018 Strategically, offering the carrot of zero tariffs will allow America to seize the moral high ground in the trade debate. — WSJ, "Mr. President, It’s Time for Zero Tariffs," 17 Oct. 2018 Pack jars with carrots, leaving 1 inch of space at top of each. — The Good Housekeeping Test Kitchen, Good Housekeeping, "Quick Pickled Carrots," 27 July 2018 Wild Zora This company started with meat and veggie bars but recently acquired the Paleo Meals to Go brand, which makes things like Mountain Beef Stew with carrots, mushrooms, and celery, and Canyon Chicken Curry with sweet potatoes and cauliflower. — Ac Shilton, Outside Online, "This Is the Golden Age of Backpacking Food," 27 June 2018 Here are three variations, two combining the lentils with sweet potato and one combining them with carrots. — Adam Ried, BostonGlobe.com, "Recipes: Three summer dips featuring red lentils," 22 June 2018 And in other cases when a deal isn’t struck, teams will use the carrot of waiving them as a lever to get the player back in the fold. — Albert Breer, SI.com, "For Andrew Luck, It All Re-Starts Here," 18 June 2018 Faced with that, America’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, decided in 2013 to launch a challenge to build a MANET with more than 50 nodes, with the carrot of a juicy contract for the winner. — The Economist, "A new type of battlefield network is in development," 14 June 2018 Scatter rice with carrots, pistachios, almonds, pomegranate and herbs. — Alison Roman, The Cut, "Forget Engagement Chicken. Meet Breakup Steak.," 6 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'carrot.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Keep scrolling for more

Learn More about carrot

Dictionary Entries near carrot

Statistics for carrot

Last Updated

15 Dec 2018

Look-up Popularity

Time Traveler for carrot

The first known use of carrot was in 1533

See more words from the same year

Keep scrolling for more

More Definitions for carrot

carrot

noun

English Language Learners Definition of carrot

: the long orange root of a plant that is eaten as a vegetable

: something that is offered as a reward or advantage to persuade a person to do something

See the full definition for carrot in the English Language Learners Dictionary

carrot

noun

car·rot | \ˈker-ət

Kids Definition of carrot

: a long orange root of a garden plant that is eaten as a vegetable

carrot

noun

car·rot | \ˈkar-ət

Medical Definition of carrot

: a biennial plant of the genus Daucus (D. carota) that bears seeds which have been used especially as a diuretic and stimulant and that in cultivated varieties has a yellow or orange-red tapering root which is used as a vegetable also : its root