Why is a tomato classed as a fruit when we treat it like a vegetable?

@SW-User How is "fruit" a scientific classification but "vegetable" isn't? Either they are both scientific classifications or neither is. Both or neither, but not one of each. Which is it to be?

@SW-User appearance of fruit with the seeds with the nutritional value of a vegetable.

@Crazychick no, I think fruit has a real definition. Not every word is a scientific concept. Like 'critter' and 'insect'. Technically an insect has 6 legs, so spiders, centipedes, aren't insects etc... but they're all 'critters' cos it's just a popular term.

@SW-User "Critter" is an American mangling of the word "creature", isn't it?

@Crazychick A regional colloquialism. Like the collective noun "Y'all" = you all.

@badminton "Regional colloquialism" is the same thing as being mangled in a specific place (in this case, America).

@MasterLee Who said it does? What's that got to do with this thread?

@Crazychick When I was 18 I was in the Panama city airport for a few hours awaiting my flight. A drunk Englishman came up to me and said "where's the left?" I said the left is that way (pointing left). He said "No no the left, the left, the thing that takes you up and down." Then I realized he was saying [b]lift[/b] "Oh you mean the elevator. It's that way."

@Crazychick I've seen people use critter to mean 'bugs'. My point is that insect as a real technical definition, but something like 'bugs' doesn't. Maybe I can think of another similar example.

@badminton That's just a regional accent.

@SW-User I thought a "critter" could be any creature, not just a bug.

@Crazychick perhaps, so they don't have scientific definitions unlike 'insect' or 'mammal'

@SW-User I never said "critter" was a scientific definition in the first place. I wasn't even the first one to mention it. Lol :)

@Crazychick I know, this was because you said if fruit had a scientific definition so vegetable had to have one (or neither of them). I was saying that there's no reason to think that. some words have scientific definitions like fruit (I think) and some just have colloquial definitions 'vegetable' (I think)

@SW-User I don't think "vegetable" is a colloquial definition. There is something about it that sounds scientific.

@Crazychick I doubt it, it just means 'savoury plant that you eat' doesn't it?

@Crazychick my Chinese friend's mum used to put cherry tomatoes in her fruit salad btw

@SW-User sounds interesting but not tasty!

@UncleJlovesbrazil doesn't work for me either ;)

@SW-User I wouldn't put any tomatoes in a fruit salad. Cherries, yes, but not tomatoes.