Picture two long words being cut short in the same friendly way. Vegetable loses its tail, vegetarian loses its tail, and a soft -ie is stuck on what is left — and both of them land on exactly the same little word. That is why one spelling can hand you the food on the plate, the person who will not eat meat, the dish cooked without meat, and even a green taste in a glass of wine. Nothing is hidden in the word itself; the sentence around it always tells you which one arrived.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary records veggie as a clipping of vegetable and/or vegetarian plus -ie. The two possible sources are the whole story of this word: one short form doing the work of two long ones.
Wiktionary 記錄 veggie 是 vegetable 的縮寫，也可能來自 vegetarian 加 -ie。這兩條可能的來源，其實就是這個字的全部故事：一個短字同時扛下兩個長字的工作。英文裡 -ie、-y 常用來把長字變短、變親切，像 telly、hankie，veggie 是同一個習慣。
Wiktionary (kaikki extract, source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:854263274:3937): Clipping of vegetable and/or vegetarian + -ie.
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