I hope that botanists have been writing regarding The Straight Dope column called “Sinfully delicious,” in which you claimed that wheat isn’t a fruit. This statement is incorrect. The word wheat can refer to any plant of the genus Triticum or to the grain produced by these plants. The fruit of a member of the Grass Family, to which Triticum belongs, is called a grain, or caryopsis, and this is the part used as a cereal food in the case of wheat, rye, rice, etc. People think of grain as the “seed” of a cereal grass, but that’s not right, either. By definition a grain is a fruit, the ripened ovary of a seed plant, in the case of grasses 1-seeded, non-opening, and usually dry and with the seed coat grown together with the ovary wall. Wheat is a grain, and grains are fruits; therefore, wheat is a fruit.
I assume your comment is in response to the recent column, Was the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden an apple? (24-Nov-2006), where Cecil states:
If it’s any consolation, one of Cecil’s Li’l Helpers agrees that wheat is a fruit. From the staff report What’s the difference between fruits and vegetables?, Terey says
The botanical definition is irrelevant; the article is talking about whether The Hebrews considered it a fruit.
Since this is about a Staff Report, I’m moving it to the appropriate forum.
Steal my thread, will you? I kept it because I thought it was more about Cecil’s column on the forbidden fruit than on Terey’s Staff Report on the definition of fruit. But if you’re jonesing for a thread, far be it from me to bogart it.
Thread fiend.
The OP makes the common error of thinking that words can have only one meaning. The word “fruit” has several different senses, including a culinary sense as well as a botanical sense. (Which, by the way, leads to endless pointless discussions on whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable; in actual fact, it is both, since these are non-exclusive categories.) It is obvious from context that Cecil was using the word in the culinary sense; therefore the OP’s objection is nugatory.
While it is true that a grain is a fruit in the botanical sense, this is entirely irrelevant to the column. The ancient Hebrews were not botanists, and it should be clear that the word '“fruit” in Genesis was being used in the culinary sense. Hence Cecil’s characterization was appropriate.
From Merriam-Webster
Bolding mine.
Those who wish to nit-pick Cecil would be well to consult a dictionary before doing so.
I’m with bibliophage on this; I think the OP was commenting on Cecil’s column, not the Staff Report.
I bow to your wishes and transfer it back to Comments on Cecil’s Column. Sorry about that, now I read it more carefully, I agree with y’all and disagree with myself.
I wonder what will happen when I transfer it back… could disrupt the entire trouser-leg of space/time.
Interesting… it seems to have put it back in it’s original slot, so there’s not a “transfer out/transfer in/transfer out” labyrinth. Live and learn.
Great. That tells us a lot. So is a nougat a fruit or a vegetable?
Nougat usually contains nuts, which are fruits in the botanical sense, and sometimes fruits such as apricots, which are fruits in both the botanical and the culinary sense. Therefore, nougat would be mostly made of fruit in the botanical sense. In the culinary sense, however, nougat itself is a confection.
If nougat were a vegetable, there wouldn’t be so much of a problem getting kids to eat them.
Good thing, too. Otherwise you might have created a warp in the space-time continuum. 
Blast. I really did not think there was a real answer to my smartass question. Kudos.
Is now the time to mention that “kudos” is singular, not plural? 
I dunno. Did I use it incorrectly?
Rather irrelevant, since **Contrapuntal ** used it correctly, as in sense 2:
From Merriam-Webster.
But also see:
Simply saying “kudos” as the singular Greek noun makes no sense: do you say “congratulation” to someone? I suspect he was using it as the corrupted pseudo-English noun kudo, -s. Which I refuse to accept, in much the same way I don’t say “ain’t” despite the fact that many do.
Welcome to the world of modern English, in which one can only say to your ‘Greek’ objection: c’est la vie.
If you watch BBC television (the Greeks presumably would have to do this with the Romans :eek: ), you will see that sticking to original languages leaves you in zugswang.
You can try to curry favour with the Oxford English Dictionary, but the likelihood of such a fianchetto is remote.
I suspect I was. What do you offer as the plural? Kudoses? Kudosi? Just wondering.
It’s not a “singular Greek Noun” or even a Greek word. It’s now an English word, whose roots are in the Greek kydos. When will dudes understand that English (as most languages) borrows many of it’s words from other tongues and after a suitable period, the word no longer is a foriegn word.
Thus “kudos” is perfectly correct, much like “congratulations”.
Sigh. This is the Straight Dope Message Board, you know? A repository of information of all sorts. Check the Archives from time to time: Kudos