Chuck Berry

You’ve probably heard that tomatoes are technically fruits. Perhaps you’ve also heard the saying that knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. And that brings up an important point: there’s a limitation to these technical classifications.

It gets much worse the more you look at these terms. Technically, a berry is “a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary.” Yes, plants have ovaries, try not to think about that right now, there are bigger things to worry about. So the following are not berries:
Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries

...but the following are:
Oranges, tomatoes, bananas, eggplants, grapes, kiwis, avocados, pumpkins, watermelons

Vegetables are plants, and so are herbs. The only difference is that herbs are just to taste, rather than a main ingredient. But basil is usually a herb, but pesto isn’t pesto without basil, so does that make it a vegetable. Or a part-time vegetable?

This is turning into one of those pedantic, meaningless, non-trivia pieces of trivial information like the names of groups of animals. I (and others) argued that if no one uses the term, then the term doesn’t really have meaning.

I’m not one of those people who insists that scientific classifications have to conform to popular ideas. (Sorry Pluto, I’m with Neil Degrase Tyson on this one.) And it’s fine when we try to put some scientific rigour behind common definitions, only to find that there are exceptions we didn’t previously think of. I will still correct you if you try to call whales or dolphins, “fish.”

But if the scientific definition turns out to have nothing at all to do with the popular definition, then it’s time to admit that we need new words. How about we define "berry" as, "sort of fruit-like, but smaller." And then the scientific concept that they're calling "berry" — even though it isn't — can be something else; I don't know, name it after a great berry scientist or something.