someone asked me a philological question to do with 'vegetable' (because 'vegetate' now means roughly the opposite of what it used to), and while poking around in the OED for them i found that by 1757 we already had english "vegetal" referring chiefly of a life or lifestyle resembling that of a plant, esp. uneventful, featureless, passive, monotonous. and as i was going through the quotations i found:

(1626 T. Hawkins tr. N. Caussin Holy Court 244): A great number of men are now a dayes vegetalls [Fr. vegetaux], that is to say, who so liue, as if they had no other soule but the vegetatiue, as plantes, and lead the very life of the mushrome.

i liked that. 'very liue of the mushrome' is excellent!