Shambles, with or without the omni, is having a bit of a moment.

The word is spiking on a linguistic graph already overloaded with descriptions of chaos. The carnage it describes was once entirely literal, for shambles was used of the stalls of medieval butchers, bespattered with raw flesh and gore.

Leaving aside our current bloody mess, meat was a matter of debate once again this week, as the European Parliament debated whether a sausage roll containing vegan substitutes could justifiably merit the name sausage.

A group of farmers was hoping for a ban on the use of terms hitherto reserved for carnivores in the labelling of non-meat alternatives.

Why call a bean burger a burger at all, they argued, when its contents are clearly masquerading for the real thing?

They also called for steaks, schnitzels, escalopes and wurst to be given the meaty chop lest, they suggested, the consumer be confused by such surrealistic names.

MEPs rejected the proposals but the debate nevertheless confirmed an unassailable fact: that food, and in particular meat, is at the heart of ourlanguage.

The earliest meaning of meat or mete, for Anglo-Saxons was in fact all food. As diets began to expand, adjectives were added to specify the food in question greenmeat was the collective term for vegetables, while sweetmeat encompassed any non-savoury confection.

But as vocabulary proliferated, so the meaning of meat narrowed, and came to rest on animal flesh. And as its value grew, so did its price.

It is a much-circulated fact that, after 1066, the conquered English tended the animals while the Norman elite ate the results. Thus, sheep, pig and cow are all words from Old English, while mutton, pork and beef are all borrowings from Norman French.

Food and status have always been inextricable.

As today, when a Government vote condones thousands of children going hungry during school holidays, being full has long been an unattainable desire for many.

Those able to eat and drink to satiation have always held the power, and meat became a metaphor for the human body, the male or female genitals, and, eventually, sex.

The slang lexicon is full of linguistic equations between virility and meat Francis Groses 18th-century Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue offers goose neck and giblets for a mans tackle, while a meat fanciers was a brothel, and to be meaty, in the early 20th century, was to be hot.

Behavioural psychology repeatedly shows that we have a stubbornly macho perception of meat. It is no coincidence that the paleo diet goes by such alternative names as hunter-gatherer diet and caveman diet (all based on a false assumption of what was actually eaten during the Stone Age).

The chain Greggs hijacking on social media of Piers Morgans dismissal of their vegan sausage roll (Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage, you PC-ravaged clowns) was, for many, a perfect example of metrosexuality versus machismo.Such food-based insults are nothing new.

The glorification of beef loomed large in 18th-century British political rhetoric. It was an unassailable sign of Englishness, a symbol of pride adopted by those such as the Yeomen of the Guard, who became the Beefeaters thanks to their large portions of beef to ensure strength and valour.

Beef and liberty! was the rallying cry against the French, for whom vegetarianism was part of the revolutionary logic. There was even a Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, which counted the painter Hogarth within its ranks, who gathered to eat a ritual meal of choice rare beef while singing patriotic and anti-French lampoons.

Such beefy power was personified in the character of John Bull, whose very surname shouts the superiority of the well-fed Englishman over his scrawny French counterpart. The French retaliated with the national epithet les rosbifs symbolism that lives on today.

Historically, then, the custodians of the meat lexicon might have a point. But what about linguistically? After all, burgers have been animal products from the start. Their name is, of course, short for hamburger a product of Hamburg and was originally applied to various recipes involving chopped meat.

Sausage, on the other hand, comes directly from the Latin salsus, salted: its relations are salsa, salt, salad (originally a dish of salted vegetables).

Etymologically speaking, vegan sausages are just as worthy of its name as their meaty neighbour (they are also less likely to be dubbed bags of mystery, as they were in Victorian times, because you never quite know what was in them).

Does the appropriation of burger for a vegetarian patty dilute the power of the name? Can a vegan schnitzel undo centuries of slaying and serving?

History tells us that language has always changed course according to the driving forces of culture, technology and taste.

As always, our words will follow our lead. Even German ones, a language littered with meat-based idioms. Many might say of the current debate that, in the end, Es ist mir alles wurst I really dont care or, more literally, Its all sausage to me.

There are far greater shambles to worry about. Language moves on, and so must we.

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Can a vegetarian sausage really be called sausage? Why meat has always been at the heart of our language - iNews