A soft, round red fruit that is often used as a vegetable in cooking, such as in salads, sauces, and sandwiches.
The word comes from Spanish 'tomate', which came from Nahuatl (Aztec) 'tomatl'. It entered English in the 1600s as Europeans adopted the New World plant.
Botanically, a tomato is a fruit, but in the kitchen it’s treated like a vegetable because it’s savory, not sweet. In 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court even ruled that tomatoes are vegetables for tax purposes.
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