Meat-Eating Vegetarian

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Meanings of words can change through time until, in some cases, they no longer resemble their original denotation. Two words in this case study have had an interesting journey through history to arrive at their current meanings.

The Case of the Meat-Eating Vegetarian

The term <meat> has come a long way from its earliest Old English origins. It has developed a range of connotations that have deviated in several ways from the original denotation.

According to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, the word developed from the Old English term mete meaning ‘food’, ‘item of food’. John Ayto in his book Dictionary of Word Origin’s goes further and suggests that ‘etymologically, meat is a portion of food measured out’

He goes on to suggest that its ultimate source is the Indo-European root *mat-, *met– meaning ‘measure’ and came into Old English from Germanic origins. This makes sense when you compare it to the Greek root métr(on), ultimately from the same source, which gave us the English word <metre> via the Latin metr(um) and the Old French metre.

By the time mete came to be in common usage in Old English, its meaning had broadened from ‘portion of food’ to simply ‘food’. And we have remnants of this in biblical passages, and terms such as ‘meat and drink’.

The Collin’s English Dictionary defines it as follows:

1. the flesh of mammals used as food, as distinguished from that of birds and fish.

2. anything edible, esp. flesh with the texture of meat: crab meat

3. food, as opposed to drink

4. the essence or gist: ‘the meat of the matter’

5. an archaic word for meal

6. meat and drink: a source of pleasure

7. have one’s meat and one’s manners Irish informal to lose nothing because one’s offer is not accepted

Other dictionaries include colloquial connotations that have developed as well.

The denotation of <meat>

The story of the <vegetable>

Francisco Barrientos discovered the interesting story of the denotation of the base <vegete> during his analysis to prove that <vegetation> used the suffix <-ion> and not <*-tion>.

This is Francisco’s analysis:

vegetation
→ vegete + ate + ion

Bound base: <vegete>
Related words: vegetable, vegetarian

Etymology: L. vegetāre, vegetāt-, ‘to enliven’ from vegetus, ‘lively’, from vegēre, ‘to be lively’ (Francisco).

Francisco determined that the stem <vegetate> was an attested word but needed clarification on its meaning. The American Heritage Dictionary’s definitions highlighted an interesting shift from the original denotation.

1. To grow or sprout as a plant does.

2. Pathology. To grow in size or spread abnormally.

3. To exist in a state of physical or mental inactivity or insensibility.

4. Informal. To engage in relaxing or passive activities, such as watching television.

Francisco had discovered that the modern connotations of the terms <vegetable> and <vegetate> had changed pejoratively from their original denotation. What once had meant ‘to enliven’ and ‘to be lively’ now means ‘a plant grown for food’ and ‘to be passive or mentally inactive’. Ayto tells us that the term came into English in the 14th century, and that:

“..it was not further narrowed down to ‘plant grown for food’ until the 18th century. Its semantic descent from its original links with ‘life, liveliness’ was completed in the early 20th century, when vegetable came to be used for an ‘inactive person’.”

It seems that we might be better off if we started to rethink of these terms as they were originally denoted; vegetables are the foods that give us energy, make us healthy and stimulate the brain to work more efficiently. It is a shame that such derogatory connotations have come to be associated with these words.

So what about the change in the spelling?

Real spellers know that in English there is a reason for every spelling and that words that have connected meanings will have connected spellings too. The word spelled <meat> is a homophone of two other English words <meet> and <mete>; all of which are pronounced /mi:t/. The verb <meet> meaning ‘to come upon by chance or arrangement’ is related in spelling to its participle <met> and comes from the Middle English term meten from the Old English mētan. The verb <mete>, while no longer common, still holds with the idea of apportioning out ‘to distribute by or as if by measure, allot: to mete out justice’. So when <meat> took on the connotations relating it specifically to food, it was this word that changed its spelling to distinquish it from its homgraph <mete> and to connect it to words that would reflect its meaning. According to Chambers, this change took place around 1450. The digraph <ea>, which can be used to represented the phoneme /i:/, was available and, as it was also adopted by the word <eat>, it enabled the spelling of <meat> to more closely reflect its meaning.

A meat-eating vegetarian would not have been too uncommon in the early days of the English. Indeed the “meat” of most would have been nuts, grains and vegetables, the sorts of ’enlivening’ food one would expect a vegetarian to consume.