Vegetable

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For other uses, see Vegetable (disambiguation).

Farmers' market showing vegetables for sale in Lhasa, Tibet

Fruit and vegetable output in 2004

The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This usually means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant.
However, the word is not scientific, and its meaning is largely based on culinary and cultural tradition. Therefore, the application of the word is somewhat arbitrary and subjective. For example, some people consider mushrooms to be vegetables,^[1][2][3] while others consider them a separate food category.^[4]
Some vegetables can be consumed raw, some may be eaten raw or cooked, and some must be cooked in order to be edible. Vegetables are most often cooked in savory or salty dishes. However, a few vegetables are often used in desserts and other sweet dishes, such as rhubarb pie and carrot cake.
As an adjective, the word vegetable is used in scientific and technical contexts with a different and much broader meaning, namely of "related to plants" in general, edible or not — as in vegetable matter, vegetable kingdom, vegetable origin, etc.^[5] The meaning of "vegetable" as "plant grown for food" was not established until the 18th century.^[6]

Contents [hide] 1 Etymology 2 Fruit vs. vegetables 3 Examples of different parts of plants used as vegetables 4 Nutrition 5 Color pigments 6 Safety 7 Storage 8 Standards 9 See also 10 Notes 11 Further reading 12 External links

[edit] Etymology

Vegetables in market

"Vegetable" comes from the Latin vegetabilis (animated) and from vegetare (enliven), which is derived from vegetus (active), in reference to the process of a plant growing. This in turn derives from the Proto-Indo-European base *weg- or *wog-, which is also the source of the English wake, meaning "become (or stay) alert".^{[citation needed]}
The word "vegetable" was first recorded in English in the 15th century,^[7] but applied to any plant. This is still the sense of the adjective "vegetable" in science.^[5] The related term vegetation also has a similarly broad scope.