Meaning

noun edible seeds or roots or stems or leaves or bulbs or tubers or nonsweet fruits of any of numerous herbaceous plant

originCoined in a 1948 paper in the American Journal of Psychology by Robert S. Harper and S. S. Stevens.http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9556(194807)61%3A3%3C343%3AAPSOWA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9556(195304)66%3A2%3C304%3AANCTVS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0