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PlainSpell

vegetable

/ˈvɛd͡ʒ.tə.bəl/noun, adjective

vegetable is spelled V-E-G-E-T-A-B-L-E. The wrong spelling people search most is vegtable: about 260 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 13 of all searches for the word. Vegetable is a noun meaning “A plant raised for some edible part of it, such as the leaves, roots, fruit or flowers, but excluding any…”. The plural of vegetable is vegetables.

How many letters and syllables are in vegetable?

Letters9: V-E-G-E-T-A-B-L-E
Syllables3 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing8.7 times per million words; the 7,797th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched3; the most searched, vegtable, about 260 Bing searches a month (all of them)

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).

How do you spell vegetable?

Vegetable is spelled V-E-G-E-T-A-B-L-E. 3 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for vegetable in either form.

vegetablethe right spelling3,040 searches a month
vegtablea missing e260 searches a month
vegatablea in place of e140 searches a month
vegitablei in place of e110 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is vegetable?

Vegetable appears 8.7 times per million words in written English, the 7,797th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce vegetable?

  • US /ˈvɛd͡ʒ.tə.bəl/
  • US [ˈvɛd͡ʒ.tə.bɫ̩]
  • UK /ˈvɛd͡ʒ.ə.tə.bəl/

Vegetable has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-vegetable.ogg, En-us-vegetable.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of vegetable

  • vegetables plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does vegetable mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    archaicAny plant.

  2. 2

    A plant raised for some edible part of it, such as the leaves, roots, fruit or flowers, but excluding any plant considered to be a fruit, grain, herb, or spice in the culinary sense, and usually including non-plants lumped into the same culinary category, such as edible mushrooms and seaweed.

  3. 3

    The edible part of such a plant.

  4. 4

    derogatoryA person whose brain (or, infrequently, whose body) has been damaged to the point that they cannot interact with the surrounding environment; a person in a persistent vegetative state.

  5. 5

    slangA mine (explosive device).

adjective

  1. 1

    Of or relating to plants.

    This substance is vegetable, not mineral.

  2. 2

    Of or relating to vegetables.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Vegetable in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchlégume (a plant raised for some edible part of it), végétal (any plant), légumier (of or relating to vegetables)
GermanGemüse (a plant raised for some edible part of it), Gewächs (any plant), Pflanzen- (of or relating to vegetables), Dahinvegetierender, Dahinvegetierende (a person whose brain has been damaged), pflanzlich (of or relating to plants)
Portugueselegume, hortaliça (a plant raised for some edible part of it), vegetal (any plant), leguminoso (of or relating to vegetables)
Spanishverdura, legumbre, hortaliza, vegetal, gulay, verdolaga (a plant raised for some edible part of it)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does vegetable come from?

From Middle English vegetable, from Old French vegetable, from Latin vegetābilis (“able to live and grow”), derived from vegetāre (“to enliven”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after vegetable