vegetable meaning (archaic): definition, etymology and quotations

vegetable

noun

CA, US, UK /ˈvɛd͡ʒ.tə.bəl/ · UK /ˈvɛd͡ʒ.ə.tə.bəl/

Etymology From Middle English vegetable, from Old French vegetable, from Latin vegetābilis (“able to live and grow”), derived from vegetāre (“to enliven”). Displaced Old English wyrt and ofett, whence modern wort and ovest. Related to vigil, vigour, vajra, and waker.

Archaic Any plant.

That he might ascertain whether any of the cloths of ancient Egypt were made of hemp, M. Dutrochet has examined with the microscope the weavable filaments of this last vegetable.1837, The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, volume 23, page 222:
The first of the tall trees was reached, and by the bearings proved the wrong one. So with the second. The third rose nearly two hundred feet into the air above a clump of underwood — a giant of a vegetable, with a red column as big as a cottage, and a wide shadow around in which a company could have manoeuvred.1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:

A plant raised for some edible part of it, such as the leaves, roots, fruit or flowers, but excluding any plant considered to be a fruit, grain, herb, or spice in the culinary sense.

It’s true that agriculture at the time was organic, food was locally produced and there were no ultraprocessed foods. But fresh fruits and vegetables were in short supply because they were difficult to ship and because growing seasons were so short.2025 January 13, Gina Kolata, “Have Americans Ever Really Been Healthy?”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 14 Jan 2025:

The edible part of such a plant.

Derogatory, Figuratively A person whose brain (or, infrequently, whose body) has been damaged to the point that they cannot interact with the surrounding environment; a person in a persistent vegetative state.

Historical, Slang A mine (explosive device).

Synonyms: vegetable
Derived terms: 57 terms
aromatic vegetable, fruit vegetable, green vegetable bug, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, leaf vegetable, leafy vegetable, multivegetable, nonvegetable, pod vegetable, regrowing vegetable, root vegetable, sea vegetable, textured vegetable protein, Tianjin preserved vegetable, vegeburger, vegetable acid, vegetable albumin, vegetable-based, vegetable box, vegetable butter, vegetable carbon, vegetable casein, vegetable caterpillar, vegetable dye, vegetable egg, vegetable fat, vegetable fern, vegetable fibrin, vegetable food, vegetable garden, vegetable hummingbird, vegetable ivory, vegetable ivory tree, vegetable jelly, vegetable juice, vegetable kingdom, vegetable lamb, vegetable leather, vegetable marrow, vegetable meat, vegetable mercury, vegetable mucus, vegetable oil, vegetable oyster, vegetable parchment, vegetable pear, vegetable rennet, vegetable sheep, vegetable shortening, vegetable soup, vegetable spaghetti, vegetable sulfur, vegetable sulphur, vegetable vitellin, vegetable weevil, vegetably, veggie
Related terms: vegan, vegetarian, vegetate, vegetation, :Category:Vegetables
Hypernyms: plant, food
Hyponyms: legume, bean, beet, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, celery, garlic, lentil, tomato, onion, paprika, pea, potato, radish, spinach, zucchini
Coordinate terms: fruit

vegetable

adj

Of or relating to plants.

This substance is vegetable, not mineral.
On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetable world was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a hill in Wessex.1882, Thomas Hardy, chapter I, in Two on a Tower. A Romance. [...] In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 1:

Of or relating to vegetables.