Fire and Knowledge

Sometimes you wonder what they were thinking when they named a thing. Take the pineapple. If ever there was an object that was less like pine and less like an apple, and in nearly every respect, this surely must be it. Or grapefruit. I don’t know about you, but if someone handed me an unfamiliar fruit that was yellow, sour, and the size of a cannonball, I don’t believe I would say, “Well, it’s rather like a grape, isn’t it?”

—Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books: 1999), p. 267.