Vegetarian - that's an old Indian word meaning "lousy hunter."

Rooney’s line is a deliberately provocative joke that frames vegetarianism through a caricatured, hunter-centered view of human life. By pretending the word comes from an “old Indian” language and glossing it as “lousy hunter,” the quip implies that abstaining from meat is not a principled ethical choice but a compensatory identity for someone who cannot obtain meat by skill. The humor depends on incongruity (a fake etymology) and on needling modern dietary ideals with a blunt, masculine, outdoorsy stereotype. Read critically, it also trades on a vague, generalized “Indian” authority, reflecting how casual comedy can lean on cultural shorthand rather than accuracy.