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Entry 5 senses · 2 variants Webster, 1913

Vegetable

/vĕj'-təb-əl/ · Veg·e·ta·ble · IPA /ˈvɛd͡ʒ.tə.bəl/
01 a. Of or pertaining to plants; having the nature of, or produced by, plants; as, a vegetable nature; vegetable growths, juices, etc.
  1. 1.
    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.
  2. 2.
    Consisting of, or comprising, plants; as, the vegetable kingdom.
Phrases & compounds
Vegetable alkali — an alkaloid.
Vegetable brimstone — See Vegetable sulphur, below.
Vegetable butter — 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 Guttiferae, 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 — See the last Phrase, below.
Vegetable leather — A shrubby West Indian spurge (Euphorbia punicea), with leathery foliage and crimson bracts.
Vegetable marrow — 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 — the oyster plant. See under Oyster.
Vegetable parchment — papyrine.
Vegetable sheep — 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.
02 n. A plant. See Plant.
  1. 1.
    A plant. See Plant.(Biol.) See: Plant
  2. 2.
    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.
  3. 3.
    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.