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Is anything actually gained from rigid definitions like this? People clearly use berry in a different way than botanists do.
by monadic2 7y ago
Is anything actually gained from rigid definitions like this? People clearly use berry in a different way than botanists do.
- blowski 7y agoIt's just wordplay, a basic pun, because the same word, "berry", appears in two different contexts. In everyday usage, a strawberry is a berry, but in botany it's not. If you're doing botany, you should probably use the latin term Fragaria instead of strawberry. Edit: If you like this, you'll also find interesting that many nuts (hazlenuts, walnuts, Brazil nuts, pecans, almonds) are not nuts but seeds. One of the few actual nuts is a chestnut.
- mcv 7y agoI know peanuts weren't nuts, but hazelnuts and walnuts?!
- blowski 7y agoIf you can find it, there's an episode of the BBC comedy panel show "Unbelievable Truth" where they list all the nuts that aren't nuts. Entertaining and surprising. The bit we eat is usually a seed or fruit - the shell encasing it is a nut. At least, that's what I understood.
- barrkel 7y agoHazelnuts are also botanical nuts.
- blowski 7y agoYou're right! I just listened again, and you're right that a hazelnut is a botanical nut.
- scandinavegan 7y agoAlso, coffee beans are not beans, but the pit (that usually comes in two parts) of the coffee fruit. It's the same with cocoa beans, but with 30-50 seeds per fruit.
- Finnucane 7y agoThe coffee fruit is a berry. We just don’t ordinarily consume the skin and fleshy part.
- masklinn 7y ago> We just don’t ordinarily consume the skin and fleshy part.\ Do you mean they're edible?
- stan_rogers 7y agoThat depends on what you mean by "edible". Coffee cherries aren't particularly pleasant, at least not for human tastes, but they're strictly edible. Palm civets seem to like 'em, but not enough to make kopi luak cheap.
- sitharus 7y agoThe cheapness is mostly because the civets are kept in cages and only fed coffee cherries https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160429-kopi-luwak-captive-civet-coffee-Indonesia/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160429-kopi-...
- monadic2 7y agoA word having multiple definitions is not a pun or wordplay, it’s just a word.
- blowski 7y agoPun - A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word. When we say "a strawberry is not a berry" we're playing on the different meanings of the word berry. It's not a humourous pun, but I would still call it a pun. [1] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/pun https://www.thefreedictionary.com/pun
- isoskeles 7y agoThere is no “play” here. Pedantically correcting people isn’t fun. There is no humor in it. Puns require humor/play. Also, correcting people to say that bananas are berries doesn’t even acknowledge a second meaning of berry. It suggests the meaning they know of is wrong. I’m aware we’re talking about a technical meaning and a commonly-accepted meaning, but the assertion is suggesting the commonly-accepted meaning is completely invalid.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- monadic2 7y agoThe dictionary is hardly a good resource for vulgar usage.
- wodenokoto 7y agoknowledge is knowing that tomatoes are fruits, wisdom is to know not to put them in a fruit salad.
- gurkendoktor 7y agoI had "seasonal fruit" for dessert tonight in Taiwan, and it was a bowl of small tomatoes. They are also a staple in fruit salad here. Yay for botany!
- fredsted 7y agoJust something to bring up as idle conversation around the water cooler.
- arrrg 7y agoI guess it’s interesting in that you can learn something about botany. However, culinary definitions (where strawberries are berries and tomatoes are vegetables) are just as valid and not wrong because botanical definitions seemingly contradict them. Bananas can both be berries and not berries at the same time and both definitions can be valid, what’s most useful then just depends on the context (and for most people most of the time that context is, by the way, a culinary one and not a botanical one).
- cryptica 7y agoAgreed, botanists should just make up new words like `fructus`, `berrius` and `vegetablus` to avoid confusion.
- Koshkin 7y agoI don’t know about that, a child (born or yet unborn) can also be called ‘fructus’ in Latin.
- Hermel 7y agoYes, you learn something about its biological function. The biological definition of “fruit” tells you where the offspring of a plant grows out of. For example, the actual fruits of the strawberry plant are the little seeds at the surface of each strawberry.
- monadic2 7y agoSure, but that doesn’t require collapsing the word to just one meaning as the article implies. Why acknowledge the biological meaning over the vulgar one?
- narag 7y agoYes, you learn something about its biological function. For me its biological function is to be eaten, so I care more about where it goes than about where it comes.
- stjohnswarts 7y agoFor botanists yes it makes a huge difference. For people, they are going to group food more in how it is cooked, used, tastes than what it's taxonomic placement is. So the answer is yes and no.