Word.ws English Dictionary

vegetal

Syllables: ve·ge·tal/ˈvɛd͡ʒɨtl̩/US/ˈvɛd͡ʒɪ̈tl̩/

vegetal adjective: capable of growth and reproduction, but not feeling or reason (often opposed to sensible and rational).

Adjective

vegetal (comparative more vegetal, superlative most vegetal)

  1. (archaic, historical) Capable of growth and reproduction, but not feeling or reason (often opposed to sensible and rational).
    • Which although it be denominated from men, and most evident in them, yet it extends and shows itself in vegetal and sensible creatures […].1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition III...
  2. Pertaining to vegetables or plants.
    • The landscape of vegetal life is weird—no forests, no meadows, no green hills, no foliage, but clublike stems of plants armed with stilettos.1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961...
    • The Computer Center is muffled and dim, warm with whiffs of sourness, of body odor, and of the vegetal smells of dirt embedded in clothes that were advancing in the direction of compost.2018, Susan Orlean, The Library Book, Simon and Schusterl, page 241
  3. Having a grassy, herbaceous taste.

Noun

vegetal (plural vegetals)

  1. (obsolete) Any vegetable organism.
    • This melancholy extends itself not to men only, but even to vegetals and sensibles.1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC

Forms of vegetal

Adjective
comparativemore vegetal
superlativemost vegetal
Noun
pluralvegetals

Origin of vegetal

Learned borrowing from Medieval Latin vegetālis, from Latin vegetō.

Words formed from vegetal

Phrases with vegetal

Questions about vegetal

What does vegetal mean?
Vegetal means capable of growth and reproduction, but not feeling or reason (often opposed to sensible and rational).
What part of speech is vegetal?
Vegetal can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce vegetal?
Vegetal is pronounced /ˈvɛd͡ʒɨtl̩/ (UK).

Words near vegetal in the dictionary

  1. vegetablize
  2. vegetablized
  3. vegetablizes
  4. vegetablizing
  5. vegetably
  6. vegetal
  7. vegetal parchment
  8. vegetal pole
  9. vegetal poles
  10. vegetaline
  11. vegetalise

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vegetal (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-vegetal.wav.

Cite this entry: “vegetal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/vegetal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.