this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago (12 children)

Recently, we were in the canteen at work and a colleague, who moved here a few years ago, told that she never had rhubarb before.

Then she asked me, probably just for vocab reasons: Rhubarb is a vegetable?

Uhh...

I had never thought about it. I mean, what the heck is this:

Could be a salad, a leafy green. It's kind of similar to celery, but is celery even a vegetable? Well, and of course, rhubarb is often used like a fruit, so uh...

Well, I looked it up, and scientifically, it does count as a vegetable, but colloquially, it's often considered a fruit.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago (7 children)

Like today's computer scientists, early biologists sucked at inventing new words, and simply reused existing ones. "Berry" in common language is a small, usually sweet and edible, fruit. Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries are all berries.

Then biologists came along and decided, actually, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are out, but watermelon and bananas are in, because the size of the fruit doesn't matter, only the placement of the seeds decides whether something is a proper, scientific berry.

A similar thing has happened with "fruit" and "vegetable", where scientific fruits include cucumbers, eggplants, and pumpkins. Luckily, all three of these are also berries.

I say we ignore them, and use words to mean sensible things.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

If a new berry was invented, computer scientists will probably call them "βerries", next one "ϐerries" (cursive beta)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Pronounced "cherries"

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