FromMiddle Englishvegetable, fromOld Frenchvegetable, fromLatinvegetābilis(“able to live and grow”), derived fromvegetāre(“to enliven”).DisplacedOld Englishwyrt andofett.
Related tovigil,vigour,vajra, andwaker.
vegetable (pluralvegetables)
- Anyplant.
1837,The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, volume23, page222: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 lastvegetable.
1881–1882,Robert Louis Stevenson,Treasure Island, London; Paris:Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883,→OCLC: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 avegetable, with a red column as big as a cottage, and a wide shadow around in which a company could have manoeuvred.
- Aplant raised for some edible part of it, such as theleaves,roots,fruit orflowers, but excluding any plant considered to be afruit,grain,herb, orspice in theculinary sense.
- Synonyms:(informal)veg,(informal)veggie
- The edible part of such a plant.
- Synonyms:(informal)veg,(informal)veggie
- (figuratively, derogatory) A person whosebrain (or, infrequently, whosebody) has beendamaged to the point that they cannotinteract with thesurroundingenvironment; a person in apersistent vegetative state.
- Synonym:cabbage
- (RAF, slang, historical) Amine(explosive device).
vegetable (notcomparable)
- Of or relating toplants.
This substance isvegetable not mineral.
1882,Thomas Hardy, chapter I, inTwo on a Tower. A Romance. [...] In Three Volumes, volume I, London:Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […],→OCLC,page 1:On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when thevegetable 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.
- Of or relating tovegetables.
of or relating to vegetables
