Quote Originally Posted by bipper
The newton says this: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasc...0/bot00134.htm

Botanically speaking, anything that bears or is a seed is considered a fruit.
There are different kinds of fruit, ie nuts are a kind of
fruit. Vegetables
are any part of the plant that doesn't have to do with making new plants.
Lettuce is a leaf, carrot is a root, celery is a stem. I think I heard a
story of how the legal definition of a fruit vs. veggie was established as a
way of avoiding taxes or tarifs or something.

vanhoeck
Further proving that vegetable has no specific definition - some scientists are saying one thing, some scientists are saying another.

Someone on the same page...
I do not have an adequate definition for 'vegetable', but my feeling for its
routine meaning is any part of a plant consumed whether a stem (celery), a
leaf (lettuce), a root or tuber (radish, or potato, respectively), and in
some cases the fruit of fertilization or structures bearing them (cucumbers,
yes-tomatoes). Add to this such items as mushrooms (basidiocarps of fungi)
and you get the idea....the term vegetable has come to mean most anything
which is not animal or mineral which we find in the 'produce' section of the
supermarket. Thus, the term vegetable has somewhat lost a botanical
usefulness in that there are more specific terms to use depending on the
particular structure being discussed.