this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 54 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

Fruit has a botanical and a culinary definition.

Vegetable only has a culinary definition.

Trying to decide on what food fits which category purely on the botanical definition of fruit is silly. In many other languages, the botanical and culinary definition even use completely different words. It's like saying lobster is red meat using a scientific definition of red.

But if we are having fun with this, rhubarb: definitely no fruit, but far too sweet, too often consumed raw or minimally processed, and far too at home in a yoghurt to fit nicely into the group vegetable.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Rhubarb’s just sour celery

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

But if we are having fun with this, rhubarb: definitely no fruit, far too sweet to fit nicely into vegetable.

Oh boy, another reason to hate rhubarb.

Also, you want a sweet vegetable? Sugar beet.

raw unprocessed sugar cane is delicious

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Well vegetable used to be used sometimes to mean "plant".

Most people don't really understand how words work.

[–] tlmcleod@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Vegetation. It's right there in the root lol you're 100% correct with people not getting how words work

[–] bountygiver@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 days ago

Having both definition of the same word that can be confused with each other is also silly, the culinary definition should find a new word.