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
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
During her many spells in hospital she didn't want to sit on her bed and "vegetate."
From BBC ● Nov. 28, 2020
Birds arrive and leave droppings that help vegetate the future dunes.
From New York Times ● Dec. 30, 2011
But after a while he became convinced that if he was ever going to do anything in Milagro besides vegetate and play the fool, he needed mobility.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
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
In his eyes, the success of a thing answers for its quality, and the charlatanism that succeeds is superior to the merit that vegetates.
From Jonathan and His Continent Rambles Through American Society by Jack Allyn
The blossom falls and the fruit withers and decays; but here the similitude fails, for, though lost for the present, the season returns, the tree vegetates anew, and the blossom again puts forth.
From Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams During the Revolution with a Memoir of Mrs. Adams by Abigail Adams
It suggests no more enterprises to the decrepitude of age, which vegetates along, drawing interest merely on the investment of its earlier enterprises.
From The Letters of William James, Vol. II by William James
The filaments in and on the substratum are the first existing members of the fungus; they continue so long as it vegetates.
From Fungi: Their Nature and Uses by M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt) Cooke
Capybaras aren’t native to Mexico; they are South American, occupying savannas and vegetated areas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 16, 2026
They have been found living along the vegetated banks of Osbaldwick Beck which runs through the park, following a seven-year project to improve the wildlife habitat in the area.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2024
The researchers used satellite data to look for green, vegetated areas within dryland areas, indicating an oasis, and tracked changes over 25 years.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 22, 2024
Crews will be installing steel girders — long boxes of reinforced concrete — over the freeway in order to build the vegetated bridge, according to Caltrans.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2024
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
Far from vegetating, those at the Metropolitan Playhouse pirouette, leap, cartwheel and even do the can-can and the highland fling.
From New York Times ● Feb. 16, 2012
Otherwise you’re nobody, nothing, a potato vegetating in your seven-by-ten limbo.
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
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.
