Vegetable /(?)/
Veg·e·ta·ble
Vegetable
a.
-
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.
- 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.
Vegetable
n.
- A plant. See Plant. (Biol.)
- 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.