Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jonny Nexus" data-source="post: 2607201" data-attributes="member: 14664">Well I guess to a certain extent I shouldn't speak for vegetarians given that I'm not a vegetarian - I'm a vegan.With veganism the issue is much simpler: the Vegan Society actually invented the word vegan during a brainstorming session at their first meeting. So what the vegan society says is the definition of the word is by definition the definition, if you get my drift.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />(And their definition is that vegans avoid the use of all animal products whereever possible - i.e. it's a lifestyle and not just a diet).With vegetarianism, the issue is more complex because the word predates organisations such as the Vegetarian Society, so it could be argued that they can't define what it means (and I'm not sure what their definition is, anyway).But I take your point that a vegetarian is simply someone who abstains entirely* from meat - for whatever reason - and that you can't, and shouldn't, assume why they are doing so.* And technically speaking, it could be argued that the definition of an English word is whatever people use it to mean, so if enough people start using it to mean "someone who eats some meat but not a lot" then that is what it will mean - and since the Vegetarian Society didn't invent the word, there's not a lot they can do about that, were it to occur.</blockquote>

Verification