SCIENTISTS HAVE A WAY of taking everyday words and redefining them for their own purposes. And then they expect the rest of us to fall meekly into line. But we were using these words long before the scientists hijacked them.
Sodium
Sodium is a soft, buttery grey material that explodes when you put it in water. Scientists will tell you it’s a metal, because of its location in the Periodic Table. But metals don’t explode in water. Metals are materials you can make swords out of.
Strawberries
Strawberries aren’t berries, botanists insist. They’re fruits. But come on, it’s called a strawberry, and was called that long before science got its teeth into them. On the other hand, we’re told bananas are berries. Seriously.
Peanuts
Peanuts aren’t nuts. They’re legumes. And cashews, pistachios, walnuts and almonds aren’t nuts either. Try telling that to Tesco.
Glass
Glass isn’t a solid. It’s a liquid, because of its non-crystalline atomic structure – or so chemistry teachers will tell you. They’ll try to prove it by showing how the glass in the bottom of old windows is thicker because it has flowed down over the centuries. But it isn’t true: the windows were simply installed with the thicker side at the bottom.
Coffee beans
They’re not beans, according to botanists. The only things that are beans are seeds from plants in the Phaseolus genera. Neither coffee beans nor cocoa beans are really beans.
Killer whales
They aren’t whales, because they’re not members of the infraorder Cetecea. They’re just big dolphins.
Deserts
Deserts are hot and sandy, right? Wrong. They’re places with low rainfall, or so climatologists will tell you. The largest desert on Earth is, according to them, Antarctica. Try riding across that on your camel looking for an oasis.
