this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
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Polish: *gives species a name that identifies it without ambiguity*
English: berry.
Science: that's not a berry
Culinary: That is a vegetable.
Same thing with nuts and melons.
This is so common that I wonder if it's the scientists that are wrong. They used the word to describe something different than what's usually called a berry.
Nuts and melons. We've cum full circle!
Science applied technical definitions to these terms centuries after they were already in common usage
I think it's probably because the culinary terms are feel based, while the scientific terms are more rigorously defined, and thus ends up describing different things, because nothing properly fits for the culinary feels-based definitions
People keep telling me eggplants are a fruit but I sure wouldn't put one in a fruit salad.
As I see it, English has the word fruit twice.
Once as a sweet fruit.
And once as anything that is produced to hold the seeds. Hazelnut is the fruit of the hazelnut tree. Mushroom is the fruit of the mycelium. Pinecone is the fruit of the pine.
Also fruits of your labour somewhere.
The botanical definition of fruit is the ripened ovary of a flower.
Or even: fish
There's no such thing
There's no such fish as a thing
Same as bird. It's just helpful to lump things into broad categories.
English: "Its so nice and sweet, lets call its strawberry"
Everyone else: "umm because its a berry right?? It is a berry right?"
Just one example of how this predates English by millennia