I decided to reread the “Cat Who…” series, and noticed something in the first book, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (1966) that hadn’t stuck out to me back when I was a teenager, the odd use of the word vegetable in reference to a person.
"Her husband teaches art at Penniman school, and he’s having a one-man show. He’s a vegetable, but he does lovely water colors." Then later "Buchwalter was the quiet man at the Halapay table - the vegetable who pained lovely watercolors, in Sandy Halapay’s estimation."
What is meant by this? I assume that given he’s an art teacher Braunn isn’t saying that he’s brain-dead, is she?
The term has a current cognate in the phrase “persistent vegetative state” describing someone who has no higher brain function. Then you factor in the hyperbole.
The term vegetating was in use during the 80s, and it might be similar. It meant acting like a plant, staying in one place and not doing much that was productive. John’s vegetating in his office instead of working on hardware specs.
We used to play a game we called “vegetables” this was in the 60s. We’d throw frisbees at each other. If it hit your arm, you couldn’t use that arm. If it hit your leg, you couldn’t use that leg. When you had no arms or legs left, you were a vegetable and lost the game. (A hit to the neck knocked you out of the game immediately as you were considered decapitated)
There was a really bad joke going around in the very early 70’s:
What’s the worst part about eating vegetables?
Helping her back up on the wheel chair
I was around in the 60’s. A vegetable was a person who could not walk and/or move on their own, most specifically a quadriplegic. But it was also sometimes applied to anyone described as a “cripple”. The person did not have to be brain dead or in a coma to fit the term.
Seems derogatory today, but back then it wasn’t really meant to be.
Peter Weir’s 1974 movie The Cars that ate Paris is a movie about car culture in a small Australian town. Some of the scenes are set in the local hospital where the patients are introduced as complete or semi-veggies depending on how badly injured they are.
Yes, and if you waste your time in front of the computer, you are a mouse potato. If your shoulder hurts from too many hours as a mouse potato, you’ve hurt your potator cuff.
While the term “vegetable” was around in the Sixties and meant someone in a vegetative state, but it wasn’t used as a slang term for someone who was an idiot. In other words, people might have said, “Poor Trudy. Her husband had a stroke, and now he’s just a vegetable,” but they didn’t say, “You vegetable! You just backed into my van, man!” or “He’s such a vegetable! He wears his bell bottoms tucked into his boots!”
Maybe this was some regional slang? I grew up in Chicagoland.