I wish this article went a bit deeper. I still don't feel like I have a primary grip on WHY the non-berry items ended up with berry names to begin with. Bananas, okay, late-period adoption, but the rest?
Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
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Re: Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
#42There's a very good video on this [1] by Innuendo Studios on why this discussion is more or subjective, since it matters in what context you say it and what you mean by it. He does this with the example of a tomato, which by botanical defintion is a fruit. But in culinary terms, it is a vegetable. So when someone says "haha, did you know that a tomato is actually a fruit", it's subjective and can almost have no added…
There is one thing to gain: an easy lesson in how things can be subjective. I believe the world suffers because many people profoundly reject this.
Re: Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
#43Is anything actually gained from rigid definitions like this? People clearly use berry in a different way than botanists do.
Yes, 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.
Re: Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
#44The scientific name is bad, it confuses everyone. Why not change that instead of telling people that berries aren't berries?
The scientific definition of fruit follows its function. That’s why botanists like it.
Re: Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
#45And strawberries are also not straws. It's all a lie.
Re: Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
#46There's a very good video on this [1] by Innuendo Studios on why this discussion is more or subjective, since it matters in what context you say it and what you mean by it. He does this with the example of a tomato, which by botanical defintion is a fruit. But in culinary terms, it is a vegetable. So when someone says "haha, did you know that a tomato is actually a fruit", it's subjective and can almost have no added…
There is one thing to gain: an easy lesson in how things can be subjective. I believe the world suffers because many people profoundly reject this.
People who write code for robot compilers (aka programmers) often make this mistake. People who write code for human compilers (aka writers) embrace the subjectivity/variability of those human compilers
Re: Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
#47Is anything actually gained from rigid definitions like this? People clearly use berry in a different way than botanists do.
Yes, 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.
Sure, 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?
Re: Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
#48I find the article pleasant in its writting and humour. For me this goes to show that thin clickbait articles can be interesting, it's just that most people who can write don't usually do clickbait. Excerpt: > The technical definition of a berry is "a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary." If you're not too familiar with botany, this definition probably isn't helpful at all. But once you learn that oranges and t…
And of course the technical definition supersedes the use of the word "berry" in the English language...
Re: Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
#49The scientific name is bad, it confuses everyone. Why not change that instead of telling people that berries aren't berries?
Then you'd have to redefine what a berry is. Do we just have a list of things that are berries? If so, who get to define that list? What if you forget one? Would that thing then not a berry anymore?
You'd could also try to make so criteria that defines berries, but that's what we already have, even though it tells us that strawberries aren't berries. We could make new ones, but how do we ensure that bananas becomes fruit, strawberries should be a berry and peas and corn should definitively not become berries?
For daily usage it fine that we don't see bananas as berries and that tomatoes certainly shouldn't go into a fruit salad, even if it's technically a fruit.
Re: Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't
#50I'd like a line drawn between "wants to be eaten" and not :)
Than strawberry would be a fruit, cucumber would be, roots salaa etc not.