Vegetarians

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. People who refrain from eating meat and fish in their diet
2. Individuals opting for a diet that excludes meat and fish while primarily consuming plant-derived foods
3. Those who choose to avoid consuming animal flesh such as meat and fish, focusing instead on plant-based foods

Etymology: "Vegetarians" is the plural of "vegetarian," so its history is the history of that base word. The term is built from "vegetable" and the suffix "-arian," which denotes a person who follows a particular practice or belief, as in "humanitarian" or "librarian." Together they describe someone whose diet centres on vegetables rather than flesh. The word was popularised after the founding of the British Vegetarian Society in 1847, which gave the diet an organised public identity and a name people could adopt. Before then, the idea of abstaining from meat had existed for centuries under other labels, but this organisation helped fix "vegetarian" as the standard term in English.

Synonyms: herbivores, plant-eaters

Antonyms: carnivores