Ardith Hinton:

Anton Shepelev:

Alan Ianson:

A root cellar is a place to "keep" food stuffs.

Probabaly so called because trees above would shoot
their roots through the cellar walls...

Hmm... I didn't see a smiley there.

I am derailing the thread with crazy self-invented
etymologies. Root cellars are named after what they
store, which is root vegetables, such as potatoes.

---
* Origin: nntp://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)