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Why do some countries call lime 'lemon' and lemon 'lime'?

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In some areas of Latin America, some species that are elsewhere known as"limas" are called"limones". Here in Spain everybody will call the yellow, big thing a"limón" and the green, small one a"lima". read more

“The word for lemon is limón, as it is in most other varieties of Spanish. The word for lime doesn’t exist [here] really,” said Scott Sadowsky, a professor of Chilean linguistics at Temuco’s Universidad de la Frontera. “That’s due to the fact that there really is nothing like a lime here. read more

A pair of false friends with a particularly complicated relationship is lemon and lime. You’d think that in Spanish lemon would be called limón and lime would be lima. But it’s not that simple. In an attempt to make sense of this, I discovered that in countries where limes are more common – like much of Latin America – they are called limones, while lemons are sometimes known as limas. This is the case in Mexico at least. read more

However, the reason why some lemons (or anything, for that matter) float or sink is simply due to its specific density. If the fruit’s overall density is smaller than that of water, it’ll float. Otherwise it’ll sink right to the bottom. read more

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