71–80 of 174 posts
Is anything actually gained from rigid definitions like this? People clearly use berry in a different way than botanists do.
Agreed, botanists should just make up new words like `fructus`, `berrius` and `vegetablus` to avoid confusion.
Btw, you know that spiders are not insects?
I remember hearing some super cliched but kinda funny saying one time: "Knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that you shouldn't put it in a fruit salad."
Is anything actually gained from rigid definitions like this? People clearly use berry in a different way than botanists do.
knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are fruits, wisdom is to know not to put them in a fruit salad.
Because this is Hacker News, the discussion would be incomplete without a link to the Supreme Court case Nix v. Hedden[1]. After the Tariff Act of 1883 taxed vegetables (but not fruits), produce seller John Nix — no relation to the package manager — sued to get tomatoes classified as a fruit. The court held that the “common meaning” mattered more than the botanical one: “Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
A word having multiple definitions is not a pun or wordplay, it’s just a 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.
Because this is Hacker News, the discussion would be incomplete without a link to the Supreme Court case Nix v. Hedden[1]. After the Tariff Act of 1883 taxed vegetables (but not fruits), produce seller John Nix — no relation to the package manager — sued to get tomatoes classified as a fruit. The court held that the “common meaning” mattered more than the botanical one: “Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit o…
I eat tomatoes like apples (with salt, I'm not a monster). No kink-shaming please.
Then again, this is an actual thing in India, albeit with _black_ salt, which is more tangy than bitter and salty.
I remember hearing some super cliched but kinda funny saying one time: "Knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that you shouldn't put it in a fruit salad."
That makes me wonder how tomato in a fruit salad would actually taste.
Because this is Hacker News, the discussion would be incomplete without a link to the Supreme Court case Nix v. Hedden[1]. After the Tariff Act of 1883 taxed vegetables (but not fruits), produce seller John Nix — no relation to the package manager — sued to get tomatoes classified as a fruit. The court held that the “common meaning” mattered more than the botanical one: “Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit o…
I eat tomatoes like apples (with salt, I'm not a monster). No kink-shaming please.
I still eat my tomatoes like that every so often, it's so good ! Although I think I end up eating quite a bit of salt when I do that which isn't so good...