Nothing too serious, i want to hear your petty, your eccentric, your off beat takes.

  • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    We surrender language to scientific/other detail oriented pursuits too easily.

    According to some, a raspberry is not a berry, but a pumpkin is. That’s dumb. The word berry existed before botanists tried (and failed) to determine exactly what it meant, and the original meaning is still way better/more useful than the botany one.

    So here it is: a berry is a small fruit, which is usually sweet, and usually edible. Raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, cherries, grapes, gooseberries, currants, and blueberries are all berries. Pumpkins, watermelons, tomatoes, zucchini and bananas are not.

    Other terms that have been co-opted this way include “work”, “salt”, and “rock”. I believe the fields stealing these terms should be forced to come up with their own, different words.