4 ms·
It'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
by blowski 7y ago
It'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.