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vegan

adjectivenounattested in dialogue

  • //ˈviːɡən//
  • //ˈveɪɡən//

Not containing animal products (meat, eggs, milk, leather, etc) or inherently involving animal use.

adjective

  1. 1

    Not containing animal products (meat, eggs, milk, leather, etc) or inherently involving animal use.

    He eats a completely vegan diet.

    This chocolate cake is vegan.

    Is their way of eating healthy and safe? Doctors and nutritionists generally give an almost unqualified “yes” to lacto‐ovo vegetarianism, but express some doubts about vegan diets.

    The interest of heavyweight investors is confirmation that vegan food has gone mainstream, but it could also make it harder for Oatly to maintain its anti-establishment image.

  2. 2

    Committed to avoiding any product or practice that inherently involves animal use.

    She is not vegan as she eats eggs and wears leather.

  3. 3

    Relating to vegans or veganism.

    Yesterday I went to a vegan party.

    She is interested in vegan philosophy.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Italic *weg-o-der.? Proto-Indo-European *weǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti Proto-Indo-European *woǵéyetider. Proto-Italic *wogeōder.? Latin vegeō Latin vegetus Latin vegetāre, vegetō Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlomder. Proto-Indo-European *-dʰlis Proto-Italic *-ðlis Latin -bilis Latin vegetābilisbor. Old French vegetablebor. Middle English vegetable English vegetable Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusder. Middle English -arie English -ary Proto-Indo-European *-nós Proto-Italic *-nos Proto-Italic *-ānos Latin -ānus Old French -ainder. Middle English -an English -an English -arian English vegetarian English vegan Clipping of vegetarian or vegetable, 1944. Coined by English vegan activist Donald Watson of the Vegan Society and first used in the name of The Vegan News.

noun

  1. 1

    A person who does not eat, drink or otherwise consume any animal products

  2. 2

    A person committed to avoiding products and practices that inherently involve animal use, including all foods containing animal products, and to abstaining from direct and intentional harm to animals as far as possible; an adherent to veganism.

    Our vegan-friendly shaving brush is made with synthetic bristles instead of badger hair.

Forms

plural
vegans
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).