Vegan

How to spell vegan

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce vegan

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vegan mean?

1. nounA person who does not eat or use any animal products, including meat, dairy, eggs, and often leather or wool.
2. adjectiveContaining or using no animal products whatsoever.

Vegan in a sentence

• noun

  As a strict vegan, she checks every label for hidden dairy.

• adjective

  The bakery now sells a vegan chocolate cake made without butter or eggs.

• noun

  The restaurant added a separate menu for any vegan in the party.

• adjective

  He switched to a vegan diet for both health and ethical reasons.

Where does vegan come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a rare example of a word with a precise birth date: it was coined in 1944 by the English animal-rights campaigner Donald Watson, who took the first three letters and the last two letters of 'vegetarian' to make a shorter label for people who avoided all animal products, not just meat. 'Vegetarian' in turn grew from the Latin vegetus, meaning 'lively, vigorous, fresh', the same root that lies behind 'vegetable' and 'vegetation'. Watson reasoned that veganism was the logical beginning and end of vegetarianism, so it was fitting that his new word should be drawn from the start and finish of the older one. The term spread from the Vegan Society he helped found and was firmly established in general English by the late twentieth century. Because it is built from familiar fragments rather than a foreign borrowing, its spelling is regular and rarely causes trouble.

How the word is built

• veg- (from 'vegetarian', itself from Latin vegetus: lively, fresh)
• -an (forming a noun/adjective of the kind)