Okay, but the ruling is totally sensible inasmuch as it applies to "purposes of tariffs, imports and customs". Tomatoes by and large aren't being imported for their botanical value; they're being used for food. This ruling exists so corporations can't "um ackshually" their way out of paying their fair share.

But that's too sensible; in reality, this unanimous ruling that I never bothered to spend five seconds researching independently (I am very intellectually superior) was just "le Americans uneducated ecksdee".

(And before you point it out: yes, an "um ackshually" definition of vegetables includes fruits, although this is using a culinary one. So indeed, the original post can't even pedant right.)

Edit: to totally gild the lily, imagine your country adds a tax to crab meat because overfishing for a luxury good is destroying the Earth's oceans. Someone sells Alaskan king crab, and they go to the courts demanding their taxes back because "um, ackshually, crabs are infraorder Brachyura, but king crabs are nested cladistically inside the hermit crab superfamily". You would hope the court would tell them to get lost, because for the environmental impact and culinary uses that the bill is targeting, it's a crab.

Fruit the botanical term and fruit the culinary term are just not the same word. Similarly to how theory means something different in science and in colloquial speech. That's just how language works.

Botanically, sure, but from a culinary perspective they're used like a vegetable.

Botanically, there's no such thing as a vegetable.

That's a culinary term, which seems to cover some fruits, some plant roots, some plant stems, some plant leaves, and some plant flowers.While culinary fruits are the other botanical fruits, and a few flowers (figs are weird)

This is dumb, botanically tomatoes are a fruit doesn't preclude them being vegetables because vegetable isn't a botanical term at all. Tomatoes are fairly sweet but they have more culinarily in common with vegetables. Nutritionally I'm not positive but it's a separate issue.

Regardless the supreme court decision was regarding tariffs/imports/customs which makes sense to classify it simply by the way in which people consume it. People eat tomatoes as a vegetable, just like we eat zucchini and cucumber as vegetables despite them all also being fruit.

Being smug over the meanings of words that aren't ever actually used in a consistent way is even more American.

Um actually, Strawberries are not a berry, it's a Gameboy, not a Nintendo, and I lick toads. Can you go to the bathroom?

The only thing similar that I have experienced in Europe is the protected food name law, e.g. Champagne and Parmesan, but that's an EU cultural protectionism law that the US doesn't actually follow.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union

Vegetables do not exist. Well, they exist as a culinary thing. There’s just no scientific/botanical definition of what makes something a vegetable.

I'm going to take this as an opportunity to point out that bees are a type of fish in California.

From Mr. Lovenstein whose website unfortunately doesn't seem to work, except to redirect you to Meta-owned socials. Ugh.

Fun fact, the vatican classifies capybaras as fish

There are two big grocery chains where I live. One puts the olives in the canned vegetable aisle, the other puts them in the canned fruit aisle. I keep forgetting which does which and end up in the wrong aisle every time.

All fruits are vegetables, but not a vegetables are fruit.

Vegetable = any edible plant part.

Fruit = Ovary of a flowering plant that carries the seeds.

I remember watching a YT video once about a legislative move of a US county to declare the number Pi to be exactly 3.

Is there even a botanical definition of vegetables?

And we laughed when some pope declared the capybara is a fish

Not unique because EU also classifies tomatoes as vegetables.

Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?
The classification of fruit and vegetables can be based
on various approaches — botanical, agronomical,
culinary — thus resulting in different definitions. For
example, the tomato is botanically a fruit, but it is
commonly considered a vegetable from both the
agronomical and the culinary points of view.
The facts and figures presented in this briefing follow
Eurostat's definitions based on the farm management
and agronomical practices, according to which the
term 'fresh vegetable' refers to annual (or, rarely,
biennial) horticultural crops, and the term 'fruit' refers
to perennial crops.
Following this approach, tomatoes are included in the
main statistical aggregate of vegetables, as well as
melons, water melons and strawberries, which are
commonly considered and consumed as fruit.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/635563/EPRS_BRI(2019)635563_EN.pdf

I wonder if in other romance languages is the same, in Spanish and Catalan the two definitions are distinguished by being masculine or feminine. Fruto/fruit being masculine is the botanical fruit and fruta/fruita is the culinary fruit.

How is it in other romance languages?

So tomatoes are trans?