Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of vegetarano
Coloured illustration of vegetarano
#2942 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

vegetarian

Word origin

From the international word vegetarian, coined in English in the 1840s around the founding of the Vegetarian Society. Its members argued the word came not from vegetable but from Latin vegetus, meaning lively and vigorous, which was a claim about the diet as much as about the etymology.

Origin
English, on a Latin root
Root
vegetus
English cognates
vegetarian, vegetate, vigour

Examples

.

My brother has been a vegetarian for ten years now.

?

Do you have anything for a vegetarian on the menu?

, .

The vegetarian does not eat meat, but does eat eggs.

Cut it at the seam and it decodes itself. Vegetar plus -an- plus -o: the suffix that makes a member or an adherent of something, the same one behind , o, o and o. A is one of the vegetarian party. Esperanto did not borrow the English word whole; it borrowed the stem and let its own machinery finish it, which is why the adjective is vegetara and a vegetarian dish is vegetara manĝo.

Do not say vegetariano. That is the reflex of every speaker of a European language and it is one syllable too long, because the - of the English word is doing the job -an- already does here. The same trap sits in o and o: take the international stem, then use the Esperanto suffix, not both.

A vegano is the stricter case, and Esperanto took that word whole from English rather than deriving it, so the two do not pattern together the way their English versions do. If you need to be exact about eggs and milk, say so: settles the question faster than any label.

Where this fits

Add to review queue

Track this word in your spaced-repetition queue and be tested on it at the right interval.

Go to my review queue

Esperanto · Free printables

vegetarano: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "vegetarano" (vegetarian): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

Free for members

The printable worksheets, infographics and PDFs are free with an account. Start a free week and download as many as you like.

Start your free week

This word is part of lesson 59.