means A round root vegetable with white-and-purple skin and a slightly peppery flesh, eaten cooked or raw and long used as both food and livestock fodder.

from A homegrown English compound: 'turn' (probably from the way it looks neatly turned on a lathe, smooth and rounded) plus 'nepe,' the old word for the plant, which goes back to Latin 'napus,' a kind of turnip or rape. So the name quietly says 'the round nepe.' That older 'nepe' also survives in 'parsnip.' And before pumpkins crossed the Atlantic, it really was hollowed-out turnips that the Irish and Scots carved into lanterns to ward off spirits — so the essence's joke has roots in fact.