The Beginning and the End of Standard Vernacularity

"The word vegan was originally derived from 'vegetarian' in 1944 when Elise Shrigley and Donald Watson, frustrated that the term 'vegetarianism' had come to include the eating of dairy products, founded the Vegan Society. They combined the first three and the last two letters of vegetarian to form 'vegan,' which they saw as "the beginning and end of vegetarianism." (Copied directly from Wikipedia.)

Oh, so "vegan" isn't even a real word... that must be why it keeps coming up in red on the spell check. Interesting.