vegetable
English
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 (“herb, vegetable, plant, crop, root”).
Pronunciation
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Audio (US): (file)
Noun
vegetable (plural vegetables)
- Any plant.
- 1837, The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (volume 23, page 222)
- 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)
- 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.
- The edible part of such a plant.
- (figuratively, derogatory) A person whose brain (or, infrequently, body) has been damaged so that they cannot interact with the surrounding environment; a person in a persistent vegetative state.
- Synonym: cabbage
Derived terms
- aromatic vegetable
- green vegetable bug
- hydrolyzed vegetable protein
- leaf vegetable
- multivegetable
- nonvegetable
- regrowing vegetable
- root vegetable
- sea vegetable
- vegeburger
- vegetable box
- vegetable carbon
- vegetable fat
- vegetable fern
- vegetable garden
- vegetable ivory
- vegetable juice
- vegetable kingdom
- vegetable lamb
- vegetable leather
- vegetable marrow
- vegetable mercury
- vegetable oil
- vegetable rennet
- vegetable sheep
- vegetable soup
- vegetable sulfur
- vegetably
- veggie
Related terms
Translations
any plant
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a plant raised for some edible part of it
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edible part of such a plant
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a person whose brain has been damaged
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Adjective
vegetable (not comparable)
- Of or relating to plants.
- 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:
- 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.
- Of or relating to vegetables.
Translations
of or relating to plants
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of or relating to vegetables
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Further reading
- vegetable on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- vegetable (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Latin
- English 3-syllable words
- English 4-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English derogatory terms
- English adjectives
- English uncomparable adjectives
- English terms with quotations
- English autohyponyms
- en:People
- en:Vegetables