What Does It Mean to ‘Fall off a Turnip Truck’?

Listener David from Canada recently wrote in with a question. He wanted to know about the meaning and origin of the phrase “to fall off the turnip truck.”

David, we’ll start with the basics. In case you’re not a fan of root vegetables, turnips are the one that look like overgrown radishes. They’re cream-colored on the outside and pure white on the inside. The part we most commonly eat grows underground, and it has broad green leaves that grow aboveground. They have a bitter taste when raw and a pretty bland taste when cooked.

People thought of turnips as food that only poor people eat.

Turnips have long been eaten by humans. But for probably just as long, they’ve been considered a food of the poor. The ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote of beggars who were so impoverished that they ate not turnips—but the scrawny leaves of turnips. In 16th-century England, turnips were grown in rotation with barley, clover, and wheat—and then fed to cows, pigs, and sheep. (1,2)

Perhaps because turnips were considered suitable eating for barnyard animals, they came to be associated with dullness and stupidity. A “turnip-eater” was considered a stupid person; a “turnip-head” a peasant or a country bumpkin. And “turnip” itself became slang for a simpleton or a fool. (3)

We see this use as early as 1656, in a book of poems that refers to a “poor turnip-eating Clown.” We also see it in Charles Dickens's “Pickwick Papers,” published in 1836. His character Sam Weller refers to himself as a “soft-headed, inkred’lous turnip.” (3) 

So, if dullards eat turnips, they might also fall from turnip trucks, right? Thus, we see the use that David mentions. You’ll most likely hear it said in the negative, as in, “I don’t believe your lies. Do you think I fell off a turnip truck?”

This expression is more common in the southern United States than in the north. There’s a chain of grocery stores in Nashville, Tennessee, called the Turnip Truck. “Southern Living” magazine calls the phrase a “quirky Southern saying.” There’s even a literary journal called "The Turnip Truck(s)," founded by a group of writers who met at the University of Idaho. 

Why did they pick that name? Editor Tina Mitchell explains that it’s a phrase her father, raised on a farm in rural South Dakota, uses often. “He frequently reminds me that ‘he didn’t fall off the turnip...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips