• Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Just to add random info/trivia: it’s interesting to note that this mess between “botanical fruit” and “culinary fruit” is largely language-dependent. In Portuguese for example it doesn’t happen - because botanical fruit is “fruto” (with “o”) and culinary fruit is “fruta” (with “a”).

    So for example, if you tell someone that cucumber is a “fruto”, that is not contentious; you’re just using a somewhat posh word if you aren’t in a botanical context. And if you tell the person that tomato is a “fruta”, you’re just being silly.

    Berry has no direct equivalent. If you must specify that the fruit comes from a single ovary, you call it “fruto simples” (lit. simple botanical-fruit), as opposed to “fruto múltiplo” (multiple fruit - e.g. pineapple). Popularly people will call stuff like strawberries and mulberries by multiple names, like “frutinhas” (little fruits) and the likes.

    • Successful_Try543@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      In German, the fruits you would put in a fruit salat are called Obst, in contrast to Frucht (fruit) / Früchte (fruits) which can be ‘anything’ complying with the botanical definition. You’d refer to tomatoes and paprika as Frucht-Gemüse (fruit vegetables).

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        In German, the fruits you would put in a fruit salat are called Obst

        A salad works, but isn’t it easier to just snort it? :^)

        Sorry for the shitty joke above. Seriously now: after a quick check, apparently the cognate of “Obst” still exists in English, as “ovest”. Nowadays only used dialectally for nuts like acorns being fed to the pigs. It would be fun if it was reintroduced as “culinary fruit”, following the German example, and keeping the Latin borrowing “fruit” for the botanical def.