a plant or part of a plant, such as carrots or lettuce, that people cook or eat raw as food
Mom sliced a fresh vegetable salad for lunch.
Rabbits love munching on every vegetable in the garden.
✦ Late Middle English from Old French, originally meaning ‘growing, flourishing’ and later ‘plant’; from Latin vegetabilis ‘grow, sprout’, from vegetare ‘animate’.
an offensive term for a person who cannot move, speak, or think normally because of severe brain damage
Using the word vegetable to describe a patient is hurtful and disrespectful.
The doctor explained that the term vegetable is not used in professional medicine.
✦ Transferred from the basic sense of ‘non-moving, plant-like’ to describe people in the 20th century, especially after advances in life-support technology highlighted long-term comas.
