Conversation

Suppose for argument that we adopt the (dubious but sadly common) assumption that words like "fish" should have a genealogical definition. Then, just as whales are mammals, mammals are fish — as you can see by tracing the lineages.
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Which is to say, if we look at the least common ancestor of all things that are clearly fish, and define a "fish" to be one of its descendants, then dolphins — and humans, and frogs, and birds — are fish.
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Now suppose instead we take this as the reductio ad absurdum that it is, and accept that words like "fish" should be functionally rooted, according to macroscopic human-relevant features.
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Then the natural denotation of "fish" is, I claim, the collection of all the swimmy creatures, which clearly includes dolphins.
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Yet somehow, once we figured out about genealogy, the pedants were like "well actually this fish's uncle was a fuzzy pigdear, so it's not actually a fish, you uneducated idiot, you absolute moron" and then we all forgot what "fish" meant out of sheer shame or something???
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So, look: this isn't about who the fish's uncle is. When a kid points at a whale and says "look, a fish", and you're like "haha no, its tail flaps horizontally and its gradma had hair", who's in the wrong here?
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I'm not trying to take away your concepts. You've still got words like Vertebrata, Agnatha, and Gnathastomata for when you're thinking about animals in terms of who their uncle is.
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Genealogy is a worthy endeavor! These are good concepts that promote good thinking habits! But most of us aren't thinking about animals genealogically most of the time! I care more about whether I'm going to find it in the water than about its lineage!
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I'm totally fine with y'all making up a new word for "the swimmy ones with fins but excluding the ones whose ancestors were terrestrial", if that concept is real important to you. Just stop trying to steal "fish"! We were usin it.
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And lest you think I'm fighting a lost battle: I'm drawing attention to a war, which is not yet over. At this very moment, they're coming for "fruit" and "vegetable", and I haven't seen anyone fighting on the side of righteousness (or, well, of the usefulness of the old concepts)
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"A fruit is a plant ovary". Nope! Fruits are the sweet yummy ones. Vegetables have a more muted, often savory, often slightly bitter taste, that many people dislike (or at least like much less than fruit) when they're young.
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Cucumber? Central example of a vegetable. Strawberry? Central example of a fruit. If you're having trouble figuring out which is which, ask some local children to help you out.
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But you really wanna discuss fruit ovaries, you say? Fine. Invent a new word. I'll back you up. But please avoid using "fruit". It's taken. That would be terribly confusing.
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Another modern battle ground is "berry". Protip: if your new proposed definition of "berry" includes neither strawberries nor raspberries then it is a BAD PROPOSAL. You can tell by how "strawberry" and "raspberry" have "berry" in the name.
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I don't care that strawberries and blueberries are not anatomically analogous. Anatomical analogy is not what we use the word "berry" for.
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(I actually do care that they're anatomically disanalogous, that's a cool fact and I'm happy to know it, but it's still not terribly relevant to the concept rightfully known as "berry")
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The people using "bug" to mean icky creepy crawly, "tree" to mean hard leafy greenery, and "berry" to mean bright lil bushfruit have got a good thing going. Stop tryina steal our words. Invent new ones. You can even use pseudolatin if you wanna sound all fancy and educated.
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