• naught101@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        linguistic rules override physics pedantry.

        Idk why, maybe because I’m a scientist, but this speaks to something in my soul

        • I thought briefly about editing that to say, “in this context”, but I thought it might be redundant.

          It’s like the whole fruit/vegetable debate, and there not really being a scientific category of “vegetables” that aligns with the common usage. However, in common usage, the loose, lay definition of “vegetable” is far more useful than the scientific, taxonomical one.

          Context is king.

          • naught101@lemmy.world
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            12 hours ago

            Yeah. I’ve had this discussing with others in different forms, where they are arguing that words have specific definitions…

            I would go even further… My take is that what you said is right, but also, what a given context (like “cooking”) is can be very different for different people… So even in situations where three is really only one meaning for a word (rare, but maybe “broccoli” is an example), the word is understood differently by different people because it has different connotations attached for everyone (e.g. “I love/hate it”, “my grandparent used to cook it badly”).

            Word definitions are like the lowest common denominator consensus version of those individual meaning, but they are changing slightly all the time as people change. Dictionaries are just documenting that evolution, but are constantly playing catch-up.

      • egrets@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Actually, the color is named after the fruit. It wasn’t until the late Middle Ages that we discovered anything other than the redcurrant that was red in color. Poppies, for example, were only discovered in ~1917, and we only found out about blood in the 1970s.

        • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
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          1 day ago

          Dear Mr Encyclopedia, when were raspberries discovered? Wasn’t Avalon “the isle of apples?” When did Christian bibles start describing the forbidden fruit as “apples?” Were they not red apples?

          What color did they call ripe ribe avu-crispa (a gooseberry)?

          • egrets@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            The Biblical fruit is just given as “pərî” and could be any fruit. Avalon is from the Welsh aflonydd, “peaceful”, so named because it was King Arthur’s vacation spot. Raspberries have not yet been discovered, at time of writing.

        • Denjin@lemmings.world
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          1 day ago

          Are you seriously trying to claim that no human ever bled and saw the colour until the 1970s? LOL