Vegs

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Edible plants such as carrots, beans and cabbage, eaten as food ; to spend time relaxing lazily and doing little or nothing
2. Leafy or root plants grown and eaten as food ; to lounge around in a passive, idle state, often watching television
3. Food plants like peas, potatoes and onions that people cook and eat ; to unwind by doing nothing in particular for a while

Etymology: "Vegs" is the plural of "veg", which is a clipping of "vegetable" and related words such as "vegetarian" and "vegetate". Clipped forms like this are usually the product of everyday speech shortening a longer word, and "veg" has been a common British English shortening for the vegetables on a dinner plate. The word has a more recent and deliberate origin than its common use suggests. It was coined in a 1948 paper in the American Journal of Psychology by Robert S. Harper and S. S. Stevens, who used it as a short label in their research. Its everyday sense of vegetables, and its use as a plural in "vegs", grew out of the clipping rather than from that paper.

Synonyms: vegetables