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23-07-2004, 04:04 PM

(Mathew) wrote in message . com...
Hello to all olive and plum experts, can someone please help me with a
small problem that I am having?

Is an olive a type of plum?

The definition of plum is "any of numerous varieties of small to
medium-sized round or oval smooth-skinned fruit with a single pit"
this seems to account for olives as well.

can any one comment on this?

Look a bit harder at the definition: it says a plum is "...any of
numerous species of...". That = "...any one of a number of
species...". This is different from "...any species of..."

What it means is that there are a lot of different species of stone
fruit which can all be called plums, but not that all stone fruit are
plums!

I agree it's not be instantly clear to anybody who isn't constantly
reading 'dictionary-ese', so perhaps they could have done better for
the layman.

Mike.