The word "vegan" vs "plant-based" and why we need new words.
A new word is needed.
Listen, I don't want to gatekeep people from consuming vegan things. But plant-based means nothing, and it's confusing. Because "based" to the average person implies additives could be non-plant and therefore animal. It's a useless word. "Plant-based" and vegan both can be diets. The term was needed bc of the schism between of moral absolutists who have a platonic-ideal relationship with the word vegan and their cultural counterparts who want to loosen the definition to just describe a an object of consumption and pattern of consumption.
And this simplistic semantic reason is where I the majority of disagreements within the body of "veganism" get confused and fall apart.
We can make new words. The word "vegan" was coined by members of the Vegetarian Society in 1944 as a quippier way to say "Strict Vegetarian." It was correct then to say that Vegans held Vegetarian beliefs, and it still arguably could be today.
So-called vegan beliefs/ philosophies are not monolithic. They are fractitous. People can choose to consume only vegan things for many valid reasons, often contradicting each other, and they could still be called "vegan". You can adhere to a vegan diet for all sorts of reasons-- e.g. love for animals, ethics, environmentalist, health, social-- mutally or exclusively-- and you are still vegan! You be a vegan and hate animals. You can be vegan because you hate animals. Vegan a bad descriptor belief/philosophical system.
In my opinion, vegan should refer to the product of consumption itself bc thats how it is most commonly understood. It is also the simplest, most recognizable definition: A object of consumption produced without animal products is vegan.
Ie, Jews and kosher. You wouldn't call a Jew "a kosher." You wouldn't even say a Jew "is kosher." You would say they "keep kosher" or "eats kosher" or "follows kashrut (rules about being kosher)."
I think I would like at least one new word for the affiliated group(s) of belief systems which has emerged to consume vegan things.
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Edit 19-8-2026: I retract my earlier statement. The confusion over the word vegan is probably where not the majority of the disagreements within veganism fall apart. This thread shows it's clearly the bad faith actors, vegan themselves, weaponizing the confusion about the word on whim to meet their fringe beliefs to bolster their ego. Thereby gaslighting people into believing vegan is some cult (with laws they just made up and secrets only they could know) which has no measurable basis or relation to material reality.
Which is exactly why we need a new word.