vegetate
Americanverb (used without object)
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vegetates,
present (3rd person singular)
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vegetated,
past participle, past
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vegetating
present participle
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to grow in, or as in, the manner of a plant.
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to be passive or unthinking; to do nothing.
to lie on the beach and vegetate.
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Pathology. to grow, or increase by growth, as an excrescence.
verb
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to grow like a plant; sprout
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to lead a life characterized by monotony, passivity, or mental inactivity
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pathol (of a wart, polyp, etc) to develop fleshy outgrowths
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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vegetatesimple
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vegetatessimple
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have vegetatedperfect
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has vegetatedperfect
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am vegetatingprogressive
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are vegetatingprogressive
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is vegetatingprogressive
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have been vegetatingperfect progressive
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has been vegetatingperfect progressive
Past
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vegetatedsimple
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had vegetatedperfect
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was vegetatingprogressive
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were vegetatingprogressive
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had been vegetatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of vegetate
1595–1605; < Latin vegetātus (past participle of vegetāre to quicken, enliven), equivalent to veget ( us ) lively (originally past participle of vegēre to give vigor) + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
When plants vegetate, they spread. When people vegetate, they relax. After a long day, if you want to vegetate or exert no effort in your body or mind, try sitting in front of the TV for hours. The word vegetate has opposite meanings depending on whether you're talking about plants or people. When vegetables vegetate, they proliferate or spread really quickly. When a person vegetates, he remains completely idle. A person in a vegetative state is not able to function, only to vegetate or remain completely inactive.
Vocabulary lists containing vegetate
Freak the Mighty
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Seedfolks
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "V"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He used to come home from a hard practice and vegetate on the couch, shattered by exhaustion.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 25, 2025
A long-distance lorry driver, he said he had no option but to pay privately or "sit and do nothing, vegetate and slow up".
From BBC ● Mar. 23, 2023
Made up of local efforts across 11 countries, it has reached just 16% of its overall goal to vegetate 150 million hectares.
From Science Magazine ● Feb. 11, 2021
Birds arrive and leave droppings that help vegetate the future dunes.
From New York Times ● Dec. 30, 2011
“He didn’t influence me. You know what I might do? I might stay right here in this hospital bed and vegetate. I could vegetate very comfortably right here and let other people make the decisions.”
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
When practicable, the seed should be sown in the autumn; as it seldom vegetates well, unless subjected to the action of the winter.
From The Field and Garden Vegetables of America Containing Full Descriptions of Nearly Eleven Hundred Species and Varietes; With Directions for Propagation, Culture and Use. by Fearing Burr
One vegetates, that is to say, one develops in a certain meagre fashion, which is, however, sufficient for life.
From Les Misérables by Isabel Florence Hapgood
His son, unhappy as myself, vegetates in the lowest ranks of the army; the daughter, my poor sister, was abandoned, on the evening of our departure, before the house of a neighboring farmer.
From The Queen's Necklace by Alexandre Dumas père
This process is at present unknown, hence all the indigo used there is imported from Europe, although the plant from which it can be made vegetates in every direction.
Taken as a whole, nobody could at first sight distinguish it in any way from the waving weed among which it vegetates.
From Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science by Grant Allen
Flash floods are common in Northern Arizona because the arid, sparsely vegetated environments there have little capacity to absorb rain, the park's website said, urging visitors to be especially cautious from July to mid-September.
From Barron's ● Aug. 31, 2026
Its landscapes include grasslands, lagoons, heathland and vegetated shingle, which supports a range of creatures, flora and fauna - not just birds.
From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2026
It will be the world’s largest, covering ten lanes of traffic with 210 feet of vegetated bridge.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 17, 2026
Capybaras aren’t native to Mexico; they are South American, occupying savannas and vegetated areas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 16, 2026
Native Mexican women dressed in pale tunics slid their paddles into the lake and rowed slowly, serenely across the water toward what could only be described as densely vegetated islands floating on the water.
From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall
Even in that condition he went to law offices in Atlanta every day he could, chiefly to keep from vegetating.
From Golf Digest ● Mar. 23, 2020
And without work he and his wife began to feel that they were vegetating.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 15, 2017
“You said we don’t want people vegetating in public housing. Those comments were concerning to me,” remarked freshman Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.
From Slate ● Jan. 12, 2017
He’s a name-dropper When Juan Pablo isn’t vegetating in front of the television, he hangs out with famous people, he told Andi on their overnight date.
From Time ● Mar. 11, 2014
I expect as i well it was the sight of my own father, vegetating in his chair by the fire.
From "Seedfolks" by Paul Fleischman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
