this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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Science Memes

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[โ€“] stray@pawb.social 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

But bananas are berries. It's fun to learn things.

[โ€“] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

What underlying fact does that teach you? Only that botanists categorise fruits a certain way. Learning that word doesn't teach you anything about bananas, does it?

[โ€“] stray@pawb.social 1 points 10 hours ago

Well, it taught me that berries have a strict botanical meaning rather than just being and cute little fruit on a bush, and that there can be multiple meanings for a word based on context. There's nothing wrong with calling a strawberry a berry even while understanding it's not really a berry. Correctness is important in formal discussions, but we can have fun being intentionally wrong in everyday speech where poetry and history hold more value.

From there one asks, "What is a berry? What about a banana makes it a berry? And what is a strawberry if not a berry?" And so one reads and one learns. "What about a raspberry? What about grapes?" The internet is as forthcoming with answers as one's brain is with questions.