What do you call a building for storing vegetables?
Hello everybody!
I have a vocabulary question. Before asking it, I need to explain some things. I live in Ukraine, which is the poorest country in Europe after Moldova and Kosovo. The average salary in Ukraine is only 268$ a month (except Kiev).
So, everybody who lives in Ukrainian village has to grow some vegetables in order to sell them and get some money for it as well as to eat those vegetables themselves. In addition, vegetables are used to feed ducks, pigs and cows. People usually keep those animals at their household.
To make it clear you can live in a village have a job, and still you have to work really hard to cultivate land in order to get some potatoes, beet, wheat, rye, oat, barley, pumpkings, carrots, cabbages, onions, garlic etc to survive.So, if you live in a Ukrainian village you need to have some place to store all those things. That’s the word I am looking for. I used a dictionary and it says the word I need is “cellar”, but then I googled for some pictures of a “cellar” and I understood that it isn’t the word I need as the pictures show wine inside those buildings.
My mom lives in a village and she has 4 “cellars” (the 4th one isn’t working). They are separate buildings with mostly potatoes and beet inside and some preserved food in the jars. Basically, those buildings were used to be built by digging a large hole in the ground and putting those vegetables there.
What do you call this type of building in English, and do you have something similar in your country’s villages?
Thank you!
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 6
2
Cellar is accurate, but it can mean many things. There is no specific word for what you're describing, but I know what you're saying. Many people here in the U.S. use their cellars (or basements) the same way. Cellar is a general word for the underground area of a structure. If were saying that here in the U.S. I would say "storage cellar." That clarifies what type of cellar it is.
1
In some parts of the US, people who grow vegetables for their house or to sell for extra money will store those in the basement of their houses where it is cool and dry. They'll also store canned food or other items that need cool dry storage. That room is called a "cellar." That's why you're seeing that word. (Wine cellars are a specific type of cellar where rich people will keep wine. But usually cellars are more ordinary and have vegetables and cans)
Bigger farms will keep vegetables in a building like a barn or a silo. Those are more for farmers.
1
Привіт землянин! Це "root cellar", але цікаво чому тобі потрібно на стільки точний переклад саме для цього терміну. Думаю якщо вживати більш загальне слово як "basement", то теж не буде вважатись помилкою.
1
cellar
granary
storehouse
silo
safe
stockroom
vault
warehouse
storage place
1
Hi, Sasha - This is really interesting! I'm struggling a bit to know which would be the best word for this in English.
This website seems to call this practice of storing vegetables underground 'root cellaring' (Because they would be 'root vegetables'), which sounds similar to what you have described; http://www.vegetableexpert.co.uk/how-dry-store-vegetables-grown.html
In this case, you could use the word 'cellar' - this doesn't have to relate to wine, a cellar is just an underground room used for storage, or sometimes as additional living space.
Devon
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