About " veg"

[thedaffodils]

veg Show phonetics
noun [u], plural noun UK INFORMAL
vegetables:
a fruit and veg stall
He still prefers the old-fashioned British meal of meat and two veg.

Hello!

The above definition is from online Cambridge Dictionary. I think [u] refers to uncountable noun here. But why is there "two veg" in the example sentence?

Thanks in advance!

[MrPedantic]

Hello daffs,

"Vegetables" can be a non-count noun, which means "vegetables en masse", in the context of e.g. a greengrocer's display or the accompaniment to your beef and mustard.

But it can also be the plural of the count noun "vegetable", meaning either "kind of vegetable" or (less often) "individual vegetable". Thus:

1. Meat and two veg(etables) = meat and two kinds of vegetable.
2. There are two vegetables in the bathroom – a carrot and a potato. Who put them there?

All the best,

MrP

[thedaffodils]

Hello MrP, thank you for your answer.