vegetal

What it means

1. archaichistoricalCapable of growth and reproduction, but not feeling or reason (often opposed to sensible and rational).First known use 15th c.

   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, section 2, member 1, subsection i

2. Pertaining to vegetables or plants.First known use 16th c.

   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, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 22

   1 more example

   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. cheesebeveragesHaving a grassy, herbaceous taste.

In a sentence

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, section 2, member 1, subsection i

Where it comes from

1. Latinvegetō
2. Medieval Latinvegetālis
3. Englishvegetal

Learned borrowing from Medieval Latin vegetālis, from Latin vegetō.

First known use: 15th c.