RE: The cucumber: fruit or vegetable?

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People who say that a tomato is a fruit because it contains seeds have to also accept that pumpkins, cucumbers, and peppers are fruits as well. So I find the dictionary definition unsatisfying to my intuition of what a fruit should be but it may be the best one we have that is based on properties that are objective.

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I really appreciate your cool analysis, @leprechaun.
It makes perfect sense to call cucumber a "fruit" based on its objective properties.
How about calling a cucumber (also supposedly a tomato, pumpkin, or bell pepper) based on the nature of its use as a vegetable?

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For fruit salad typically the ingredients are:

  • part of the plant that contains the seed
  • part of a plant that is also sweet

If that were adopted to be fruit, people would object to making grapefruit, lemons, limes and kiwis no longer fruit. It is convenient to have a term that includes all plant parts that contain seeds.

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