Botanically a vegetable is anything that is not the reproductive portion of the plant derived from a flower. A root or tuber such as for yam or potato are vegetables. Edible flowers could be considered a vegetable since the ovary has not expanded to contain seed.
Also biologists: "vegetable" is purely a culinary term, and doesn't have any significance in the world of botany
As it happens, when we go shopping for food we have more of a culinary mindset than botanical.
A vegetable is edible plant matter.
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Exactly