Fruit

The botanical definition of the word “fruit” is the “ripened ovary of a seed plant and its contents, including such adjacent tissues as may be inseparably connected with it” (Merriam-Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2d ed., 1934). This definition includes such forms as pea pods, maize ears, and cucumbers, as well as items generally regarded as fruits, such as apples, oranges, and strawberries. In the latter, everyday sense, “fruit” refers to fleshy, typically sweet or sour forms that are likely to be eaten raw, for dessert, or in sweet preserves. Vegetables, in contrast, are usually eaten during the principal part of a meal or in salads. However, no rigid binary taxonomy differentiates fruits from vegetables. For example, mangoes and papayas are used as vegetables when immature and as fruits when ripe. Similarly, although bananas are used as fruits, and their starchier relatives, plantains, as vegetables, forms intermediate between the two do exist. Avocados and olives are used chiefly as vegetables but often are considered, because of their form, fruits, whereas rhubarb grows as a leafy vegetable but is used and regarded as a fruit.