The word “vegetarian” comes from the Latin word vegetus, meaning “vigorous, enlivened, active.” That root traces back even further to vegere, meaning “to be alive” or “to quicken.” So despite what many people assume, “vegetarian” didn’t originally derive from “vegetable” in the sense of carrots and broccoli. Both words share the same Latin ancestor, but the core meaning was about vitality and liveliness, not plants on a plate.
The Latin Roots Behind the Word
The Latin verb vegetare meant “to enliven” or “to animate.” From it came vegetus, describing someone or something full of life and energy. Medieval Latin eventually produced vegetalis, meaning “pertaining to plants,” which entered English around 1400 as “vegetal.” The connection between plants and liveliness made intuitive sense at the time: plants were the most visible example of living, growing things.
By the time English speakers in the 1800s needed a word for people who avoided meat, they built “vegetarian” from this same family of words. The suffix “-arian” (as in “humanitarian” or “librarian”) turned it into a label for a person who follows a particular practice. The coinage carried a deliberate echo of vigor and health, not just a reference to eating vegetables.
What People Said Before “Vegetarian” Existed
For roughly two thousand years before the word appeared, people who avoided meat were called followers of the “Pythagorean diet.” The name came from the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, better known today for his geometric theorem. Pythagoras advocated abstaining from animal flesh in the 6th century B.C.E., and his ideas were influential enough that the Greek philosopher Porphyry wrote an entire book called On Abstinence from Animal Food in the 3rd century B.C.E.
The phrase “Pythagorean diet” persisted for centuries as the standard way to describe meatless eating. Others simply called it a “vegetable diet.” Neither term was especially catchy, and by the early 1800s, a growing movement in England was ready for something better.
The First Time “Vegetarian” Appeared in Print
The earliest known use of “vegetarian” in print dates to April 1842, in a small publication called The Healthian. The sentence read: “To tell a healthy vegetarian that his diet is very uncongenial with the wants of his nature.” The Oxford English Dictionary cites this as the word’s first recorded appearance.
The Healthian was published by Alcott House, a progressive school and community near London that had opened in 1838. The casual way the word appeared in 1842 suggests readers had already encountered it, possibly as early as when the school first opened. It wasn’t introduced with a definition or explanation. The audience already knew what it meant.
How the Vegetarian Society Made It Official
The word gained real staying power on September 30, 1847, when a group of activists gathered at Northwood Villa in Ramsgate, England, to form the Vegetarian Society. This was the first organization of its kind, and it replaced the old “Pythagorean” label once and for all.
The meeting brought together figures from across England who had been advocating meatless diets through various channels. Joseph Brotherton, a Member of Parliament from Salford, chaired the first meeting. His wife Martha had anonymously published the first vegetarian cookbook back in 1812, originally released in parts and later known as Vegetable Cookery. The Brothertons were members of a religious congregation that practiced both teetotalism and vegetarianism, so the movement had deep roots in both health reform and moral conviction.
William Horsell became the society’s first secretary, James Simpson its president, and William Oldham, who managed Alcott House, its treasurer. With an official organization now carrying the name, “vegetarian” quickly became the standard English term for anyone who abstained from meat.
Why “Vegetarian” Stuck
The word succeeded partly because it was simple and self-explanatory. “Pythagorean diet” required knowledge of ancient Greek philosophy. “Vegetable diet” was clunky and sounded more like a medical prescription than a personal identity. “Vegetarian” worked as both a noun and an adjective, it rolled off the tongue, and it carried that buried Latin sense of being alive and vigorous, which aligned perfectly with the health claims the movement was making.
Within a few decades, the word had spread well beyond England. Vegetarian societies formed across Europe and North America, all using the same term. By the late 1800s, “vegetarian” had become a permanent fixture in the English language, eventually spawning offshoots like “vegan” (coined in 1944 by taking the first and last letters of “vegetarian”) and later “pescatarian,” “flexitarian,” and others that borrowed its structure.