Vegetable

Definition of Vegetable

Veg`e`ta`ble

Of or pertaining to plants; having the nature of, or produced by, plants; as, a vegetable nature; vegetable growths, juices, etc.

Blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold.

- Milton.

Consisting of, or comprising, plants; as, the vegetable kingdom.

Vegetable alkali
(Chem.) an alkaloid.

Vegetable brimstone
(Bot.) See Vegetable sulphur, below.

Vegetable butter
(Bot.) a name of several kinds of concrete vegetable oil; as that produced by the Indian butter tree, the African shea tree, and the Pentadesma butyracea, a tree of the order Guttiferæ, also African. Still another kind is pressed from the seeds of cocoa (Theobroma).

Vegetable flannel
a textile material, manufactured in Germany from pine-needle wool, a down or fiber obtained from the leaves of the Pinus sylvestris.

Vegetable ivory
See Ivory nut, under Ivory.

Vegetable jelly
See Pectin.

Vegetable kingdom
(Nat. Hist.) See the last Phrase, below.

Vegetable leather
a -	(Bot.) A shrubby West Indian spurge (Euphorbia punicea), with leathery foliage and crimson bracts.
b -	See Vegetable leather, under Leather.

Vegetable marrow
(Bot.) an egg-shaped gourd, commonly eight to ten inches long. It is noted for the very tender quality of its flesh, and is a favorite culinary vegetable in England. It has been said to be of Persian origin, but is now thought to have been derived from a form of the American pumpkin.

Vegetable oyster
(Bot.) the oyster plant. See under Oyster.

Vegetable parchment
papyrine.

Vegetable sheep
(Bot.) a white woolly plant (Raoulia eximia) of New Zealand, which grows in the form of large fleecy cushions on the mountains.

Vegetable silk
a cottonlike, fibrous material obtained from the coating of the seeds of a Brazilian tree (Chorisia speciosa). It is used for various purposes, as for stuffing cushions, and the like, but is incapable of being spun on account of a want of cohesion among the fibers.

Vegetable sponge
See 1st Loof.

Vegetable sulphur
the fine and highly inflammable spores of the club moss (Lycopodium clavatum); witch meal.

Vegetable tallow
a substance resembling tallow, obtained from various plants; as, Chinese vegetable tallow, obtained from the seeds of the tallow tree. Indian vegetable tallow is a name sometimes given to piney tallow.

Vegetable wax
a waxy excretion on the leaves or fruits of certain plants, as the bayberry.

Vegetable kingdom
(Nat. Hist.) that primary division of living things which includes all plants. The classes of the vegetable kingdom have been grouped differently by various botanists. The following is one of the best of the many arrangements of the principal subdivisions.

Plants having distinct flowers and true seeds.

(Biol.) A plant. See Plant.

A plant used or cultivated for food for man or domestic animals, as the cabbage, turnip, potato, bean, dandelion, etc.; also, the edible part of such a plant, as prepared for market or the table.

A person who has permanently lost consciousness, due to damage to the brain, but remains alive; sometimes continued life requires support by machinery such as breathing tubes. Such a person is said to be in a vegetative state.

Related Words

Boston lettuce, Chinese cabbage, French bean, Irish potato, Kraut, Swiss chard, amphibian, angiosperm, annual, apathetic, aquatic plant, asparagus, aubergine, bean, bean sprout, beans, beet, beet greens, beetroot, bell pepper, benumbed, biennial, blase, bored, botanic, broccoli, bulbous, butter bean, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, celery cabbage, celery root, celtuce, cereal, chard, chick-pea, chicory, collards, contemplative, corn, cosmopolite, cress, cucumber, cutting, dead, debilitated, deciduous plant, dicot, dicotyledon, do-nothing, dopey, dormant, droopy, drugged, dull, eggplant, enervated, ephemeral, evergreen, exanimate, exotic, farinaceous, flowering plant, fruitlike, fruity, fungus, gametophyte, garlic, green bean, green onion, green pea, green pepper, greens, gumbo, gymnosperm, heavy, hebetudinous, herbaceous, herbal, herbose, herbous, herby, hominy, horseradish, hydrophyte, idle, immobile, inactive, inanimate, inert, jaded, kale, kidney beans, kohlrabi, lackadaisical, laissez-aller, laissez-faire, languid, languorous, leaden, leek, legumes, leguminose, leguminous, lentil, lethargic, lettuce, lifeless, listless, love apple, lumpish, mad apple, maize, meditative, monocot, monocotyl, moribund, motionless, mushroom, navy bean, neuter, neutral, numb, onion, oyster plant, paralytic, paralyzed, parsley, parsnip, passive, pea, pepper, perennial, phlegmatic, pieplant, pimento, pinto bean, plant, plantlike, polycot, polycotyl, polycotyledon, pooped, popcorn, potato, potherbs, procrastinating, produce, pumpkin, quiescent, quietist, quietistic, radicated, radiciform, radicular, radish, red cabbage, red pepper, rhizoid, rhubarb, rootlike, sated, scallion, seed plant, seedling, shallot, sleepy, slow, sluggish, somnolent, sorrel, soy, soya, spermatophyte, spinach, sporophyte, spud, squash, stagnant, stagnating, standpat, static, stationary, stultified, succory, sugar beet, supine, swede, sweet potato, taro, tater, thallophyte, tomato, torpid, triennial, truffle, tuberous, turnip, vascular plant, vegetables, vegetal, vegetarian, vegetational, vegetative, wan, water chestnut, weary, weed, weedy, white potato, world-weary, yam

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Vegetability
-Vegetable-
Vegetable alkali
Vegetable alkalies
Vegetable brimstone
Vegetable butter
Vegetable flannel
Vegetable gelatin
Vegetable ivory
Vegetable jelly
Vegetable kingdom
Vegetable leather
Vegetable marrow
Vegetable metamorphosis
Vegetable oyster
Vegetable parchment
Vegetable sheep
Vegetable silk
Vegetable sponge
Vegetable sulphur
Vegetable tallow
Vegetable wax

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