• ziggurat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Names not fitting botanical definitions are due to the names being given before we (people) knew what we were talking about. DNA kind of came and shook things up, well even before that but what ever.

    Also pineapples are neither apples nor grow on pine trees. And in many European languages the word for orange mean apple from China. Example appelsin, where sin in this case comes frome Sina or China

    • Tak@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      They’re not berries because of DNA advancements but because they’re from a single flower with more than one ovary. This is stuff we’ve known for far longer than DNA but generally people were… well… illiterate and the language operates on what you’re exposed to. Hell, even today people will call something a “digital” copy to talk about it being virtual but DVDs, CDs, and BluRays are all digital copies as they are all written digitally. But people are generally not concerned with this, they only care what was meant. If at a hospital someone starts yelling to get someone fluids and you show up with some compressed air, you’ll be seen as an asshole.

      Hell, bananas and avocados are technically berries.