Whereas all agree that a rose is a flower, what we should call a tomato is not so clear. Observe:
Tomato: A round vegetable with bright-red, occasionally yellow, skin and pulpy seedy flesh. It grows like fruit on climbing plants and is widely eaten cooked or raw. (Encarta World English Dictionary)
Tomato: The glossy fleshy fruit of a solanaceous plant, a native of tropical America, now cultivated as a garden vegetable in temperate as well as tropical lands. (OED)
Lest you think that deciding whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable would only trouble pedants like me, I can assure you that it has been an issue that has troubled some of the greatest legal minds.
Take the events of 1883: the US Congress passed a tariff act that placed a 10-per-cent import duty on vegetables, but no tariff on fruits. So when the produce-importing Nix family brought in tomatoes from the West Indies, they were hit with a 10-per-cent duty on the basis that the import was one of vegetables.
Needless to say, the Nixes were not amused, and botanically they had a solid basis for being disgruntled, since tomatoes are the freshly ripened ovaries of a plant (i.e., the fruit thereof). However, legally speaking, matters weren't as cut and dried, and a six-year battle ensued with arguments presented before the US Supreme Court in 1893. Defense and prosecution cited myriad dictionary definitions that supported their position. The defense even cited definitions for cucumbers, eggplant, pepper and squash to bolster their argument.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that tomatoes were vegetables. While admitting that biologically a tomato was a fruit, Justice Horace Gray stated that tomatoes were served “at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruits, generically, as dessert.”
And if you think this case rested on nitpicking produce definitions, fast-forward to the 21st century for an even more casuistic case. To wit, eagle-eyed lawyers for a company that imported Marvel character action figures noticed that dolls were subject to a 12-per-cent tariff rate whereas toys were taxed at 6.8 per cent. Dolls were distinguished from toys by “representing only human beings and parts and accessories thereof.” (A new Harmonized Tariff Schedule has since rectified this disparity.)
Because the said action figures were classified as dolls at the higher tariff rate, Marvel Comics subsidiary Toy Biz argued before the US Court of International Trade that their action figures, such as X-Men, represented “non-human creatures” and hence qualified for the lower duty rate. In 2003, the US Court of International Trade ruled in favour of Toy Biz, declaring that mutants were “non-human.”
This ruling, however, did not sit well with fans, who felt that their action heroes were being objectified. Brian Wilkinson, editor of the X-Fan website, found Marvel's position untenable: “Marvel's superheroes are supposed to be as human as you or I. They live in New York. They have families and go to work. And now they're no longer human!”
In a statement, Marvel Comics responded to this and other jeremiads with adroit sophistry: “Our heoes are living breathing human beings – but humans who have extraordinary abilities. A decision that the X-Men figures indeed do have ‘non-human' characteristics further proves our characters have special, out-of-this-world powers.”
In these cases, the definitions of words such as “fruit,” “vegetable” and “human” only impinged on tariff rates, but the meaning ascribed to words also looms large when criminal offenses are involved. I take you back to 1926, when William McBoyle was convicted of a violation of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act.
The vehicle in question was a stolen airplane that McBoyle had an aviator fly from Illinois to Oklahoma. McBoyle's counsel argued that the word “vehicle” included only conveyances that travel on the ground. To support his claim, he cited Webster's definition: “That in or on which any person or thing is or may be carried. Esp. on land, as a coach, wagon, car, bicycle, etc.”
Hence the airplane was not a vehicle but a “ship” and could not be construed as a ground-based vehicle. Here is part of the ruling rendered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in 1931:
“Although it is not likely that a criminal will … consider the text of the law before he murders or steals, it is reasonable that a fair warning should be given to the world in a language that the common world will understand. When a rule … is laid down in words that evoke in the common mind only the picture of vehicles moving on land, the statute should not be extended to aircraft simply because it may seem to us that a similar policy applies, or the speculation that if the legislature had thought of it, very likely broader words would have been used. Judgment reversed.”
Howard Richler's next book, Arranged & Deranged Wit, will be published in 2015.