The words Vegitarian and Vegan?

Question

are these ancient words meaning bad hunter and really bad hunter respectively?

Answer 1

ROFL
And here I thought they meant "Young and pretentious" and "Young, pretentious, dressed in black, and have no idea that eating eggs and drinking milk is vegetarian and not vegan."

Answer 2

NO! It makes for a good joke on the two but it doesn't actually mean that. Someone in India tried to make the Indian population feel better about starving to death and invented vegetarian diets so that the average person in India wouldn't feel bad about being malnourished and weak...everyone would be.

It was probably invented so that the rich in India would eat less and leave a little for the starving masses as they wouldn't do it without some threat from God.

Not really but I am upset by the Indian religions that allow rich people to take advantage of the poor by using the philosophy of Karma...they deserve it because of some crime they committed in a previous life so we don't have to interfere with "God's" plan. GRRRRR! Again using religion as a weapon to keep people suppressed!!!!!!! Inventing diets to keep people weak and ineffective! ANGER!

(Incidently, religious people from India claim that India invented the vegetarian diet and until the chosen people of India came up with the idea, people were dying from disease. Surprise, people in India still are dying from disease! Surprise again, people in Europe have been eating this way for thousands of years. I've been talking to too many religious people from India and it has left me truly skeptical!)

Answer 3

Vegetarian

The term "vegetarian" was coined in 1847. It was first formally used on September 30th of that year by Joseph Brotherton and others, at Northwood Villa in Kent, England. The occasion being the inaugural meeting of the Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom.

For many years prior to 1847, non-meat eaters were generally known as Pythagoreans or adhering to the "Pythagorean System", after the ancient Greek "vegetarian" Pythagorus.

The original definition of "Vegetarian" was "with or without eggs or dairy products" and this is the definition still used by the Vegetarian Society today. Most vegetarians in India, however, exclude eggs from their diet as did those in the classical Mediterranean lands, such as Pythagoras.

Some background to 'vegetarian' and 'vegan'

The earliest non-meat-eaters that we know anything much about were in India and Ancient Greece (Pythagoreans), they used plant food plus dairy products - what we would now call lacto-vegetarian, which has always been, and still is, the predominant form of vegetarianism in India.

The use of eggs was added by the British, probably in the 18th century when they revived the Pythagorean ideas. We can't be entirely sure why eggs were added but in the relatively cold, damp climate of Northern England, where all this was happening, the variety of fresh plant foods would have been much more limited than in India or the Mediterranean. Imports would have been very expensive and not very fresh by the time they arrived, so accepting eggs may have been a pragmatic decision. We would now call this group ovo-lacto-vegetarians and they are still the predominant tradition in the UK.

In 1847 the word 'vegetarian' was invented by Joseph Brotherton and friends - the founders of the UK Vegetarian Society. Before that they rather innacurately called themselves Pythagoreans but no-one seemed to be too concerned about accuracy until the V word was invented, and we've been arguing about it ever since. The original definition was about eating various plant-foods, not eating 'meat, fish or fowl' and the immortal final phrase: 'with or without eggs or dairy produce'. Hence the lacto-veg and ovo-lacto-veg.

Those who ate neither eggs nor dairy produce became known as 'strict vegetarians' and those remained the three main groups for the next hundred years or so.

However... as early as 1851 there was an article in the Vegetarian Society magazine (copies still exist) about alternatives to leather for making shoes, there was even a report of someone patenting a new material. So there was always another group who were not just 'strict vegetarians' but also avoided using animal products for clothing or other purposes - naturally they wanted their own 'word' too, but they had a long wait.

In 1944 Donald Watson and friends invented the word 'vegan' to fill the gap, and founded the Vegan Society (in the UK) specifically for this group. They defined the word in terms of all animal products, not just a diet, as that was the reason for inventing it, and everyone was happy - until the Americans got involved...

The British ideas had long since crossed the Atlantic but, as always, Americans have their own way of doing things. Whilst many used the same words, for the same reasons, even more began to use them differently. The health aspect of vegetarianism has always seemed to be a bigger issue in America than in Britain, and a lot of people who only ate meat occasionally, for health reasons, started calling themselves 'vegetarian'. The latest surveys suggest that, in the USA, there are up to seven times as many of these 'semi' vegetarians as genuine vegetarians by any of the definitions above.

For many, the logic of the health argument also leads to the removal of eggs/dairy products and it would appear that a very much higher proportion of American vegetarians are 'no eggs/dairy' than in Britain, but again a significant proportion of those are primarily motivated by health, and are therefore not bothered about wearing leather etc. This fits the 'strict vegetarian' group, but in the best of American traditions, they then confused things further by insisting on calling themselves 'vegan'.

This has become so common that the UK Vegan Society has had to acknowledge the development of its original word into concepts of 'dietary vegan' and 'ethical vegan', even though 'dietary vegans' are almost unknown in the UK, or anywhere else outside of North America.

Answer 4

1944, from vegetable (n.) + -an; coined by Donald Watson to distinguish those who abstain from all animal products (eggs, cheese, etc.) from those who merely refuse to eat the animals.

1839, irregular formation from vegetable (n.) + -arian, as in agrarian, etc. "The general use of the word appears to have been largely due to the formation of the Vegetarian Society in Ramsgate in 1847."

Enjoy

Apperently they have no special reason for their outcome, simply words produced to describe people. I heard that they used to describe someone being happy but not sure about that either.

Answer 5

A true vegan avoids eating or using any animal products including honey, silk, leather, rennet, eggs, milk, cheese, etc etc

Answer 6

a vegan doesn't eat ANY animal/animal product. a vegetarian doesn't eat meat/fish.eg.a vegan doesn't drink milk but a vegi. does.

Answer 7

You need to check your spellings before making such statements.

I thought they meant poor student and very poor student respectively.

Answer 8

Vegetarian ,eat vegetables and fish,and vegan gest vegetable,nothing to do with any meat

Answer 9

I thought it was more to do with an allergy or dislike to animals ans animal products.

Answer 10

vegetarians eat cheese on toast
vegans eat baked beans