Bear with me. I am just filling up the first couple of sentences so that the mouse-over preview doesn’t impair the point of this thread. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Now then.
When you saw the title of this thread, did you think of:
The green/red juicy fruit of the Malus siervsii tree, or
Products made by a Californian computer/electronics company?
The immediate response was an image of a red apple and a slight sensation of biting into one, with sound effect, but without taste.
Then the word connected with the idea of this being a Straight Dope thread, and the idea immediately morphed into the computer logo. Of course, that may have happened anyway, even without the context. But I was aware of the context as the idea shifted.
So the fruit is still primary, but the two ideas are very closely linked, especially in certain contexts.
Not sure which way ‘apple’ would have gone, but ‘apples’ was definitely less associated with the computer. I still think the fruit would have been there, just maybe not in that order.
Apples, also known as “bopples”, because that’s how the 2 year old says it, are the most favored snack food in our house. I’ve had to limit my son’s consumption to fewer than 4 per day to avoid constipatory issues.
I was wondering why people don’t use more descriptive subject lines. The mouse over intrigued me, so I came in to have a look. I actually did the mouse over to see if you were talking about fruit or computers - I hadn’t made up my mind.
Fruit, almost immediately followed by the computer. I had just posted to a thread about the PC v Mac commercials otherwise it likely would have been the fruit only.
As soon as I saw the subject line, the image that came to my mind was of a huge, lovely Red Delicious still on the tree. Never mind that as far as apples go, I’d prefer a Fuji or Granny Smith, taste-wise - the Red Delicious simply looks tastier.
Fruit. Singular apple would have been a toss-up. Blackberries would probably have made me think technology over fruit. However, had the thread titled Blackberries been in Cafe Society, I’d have thought fruit.
I’ll fourth? fifth? the ‘apple without an a’ point of view. Blackberries, however - thoughts go straight to the device, even though I’ve never seen or used one. Presumably never having seen or used one is why I’m not sure what to call it.
