Who decided avocados are berries? Botanists, apparently. And who decided what counts as a nut, a seed, a fruit, or a vegetable? Some bloke in history with a notebook, that’s who.
We’ve all just accepted these classifications, nodded politely, and carried them forward for centuries. “This is a weed, that’s a flower.” Why? A weed is just a plant that turned up uninvited. If I like the look of a dandelion in the cracks of the pavement, who says it’s not a flower? Why should some dusty old horticultural committee have more say than me?
Avocados taste nutty. They’re nut-adjacent. Case closed. But no, apparently they’re a berry, because someone wrote it down in Latin two hundred years ago and we’ve all been too polite to argue.
Maybe we should start classifying things our way. Avocados: nuts. Dandelions: flowers. Brussels sprouts: biological warfare.
If language evolves, why can’t categories?