sb. and a. [Irreg. f. VEGET-ABLE after sbs. and adjs. in -arian. Hence F. vvégétarien, G. vegetarianer.
The general use of the word appears to have been largely due to the formation of the Vegetarian Society at Ramsgate in 1847.]
A. sb. 1. One who lives wholly or principally upon vegetable foods; a person who on principle abstains from any form of animal food, or at least such as is obtained by the direct destruction of life.
1842. Healthian, April, 34. To tell a healthy vegetarian that his diet is very uncongenial with the wants of his nature.
1854. H. Miller, Sch. & Schm. (1858), 332. A man can scarce become a vegetarian even without also becoming in some measure intolerant of the still large … class that eat beef with their greens, and herrings with their potatoes.
1885. Salmon, Introd. N. T., xi. 241. Even those who used animal food themselves came to think of the vegetarian as one who lived a higher life.
b. transf. Of animals, etc.
1854. Poultry Chron., I. 307. For though ours are not vegetarians, every chicken we have is a stanch teetotaler!
1861. P. P. Carpenter, in Rep. Smithsonian Instit., 1860, 194. It is almost certain that some tribes [of Gasteropods] which have a permanently elongated muzzle are not vegetarians.
2. A member of a fanatical Chinese sect. Also attrib.
1895. Tablet, 10 Aug., 208. Some 80 men belonging to a sect known as Vegetarians stormed the station … at night.
1896. Mission. Herald (Boston), July, 279. A large portion of the vegetarians were unwilling to even plunder the missionaries. Ibid. The vegetarian leaders imagined that the missionaries were at the bottom of this activity against themselves.
B. adj. 1. Of or pertaining to vegetarians or vegetarianism; practising or advocating vegetarianism.
In this group possibly attrib. uses of the sb.
1849. Vegetarian Messenger, Introd. 1. Condensed accounts of meetings and the transactions of the Vegetarian Society.
1860. [John Smith] (title), The Principles and Practice of Vegetarian Cookery.
1890. J. Knight, Vegetarianism in Practice, 11. The moral aspects of the Vegetarian practice. Ibid., 12. The Vegetarian system affords such articles as will give all requisite nourishment.
2. Of animals: Living on vegetables.
1856. T. R. Jones, Aquarian Nat., 342. Mr. Darwin gives an interesting account of a crab … which lives on cocoa-nuts…. This vegetarian crab [etc.].
1869. R. Trimen, in Noble, The Cape & its People, 100. An order … composed almost wholly of vegetarian insects.
3. Consisting of vegetables or plants.
1868. R. Owen, Anat. Vertebrates, III. 293. The diprotodont [type of dentition] obtains in the majority of the Australasian marsupials, and is associated usually with vegetarian or promiscuous diet.
1911. Swanton, Ind. Tribes Lower Mississ. (Bureau Amer. Ethnol.), 317. The diet of the Tunica was more vegetarian than that of American tribes generally.
