Skin, rind and peel

Question

Hi.What is the difference between skin, peel and rind when we are talking about fruits?Does it have to do with the kind of fruits?For an instance, I have heard rind more for citrus and peel for vegetables like potato and skin for tomato.Is there any particular rule for it?Thank you for your timeHamid

Enoon · Accepted Answer

A rind is thicker, tougher. A peel is for things that are peeled. It's all skin.

Clive · Answer

Hi Hrsanei,

You probably know that the use of 'fruit' versus 'fruits' has been endlessly discussed on the Forum.

I just want to mention that I'd have said 'fruit' where you said 'fruits' in your first post..
Outside this Forum, I don't think I've used the word 'fruits' once in the last 10 years!

Clive

Hrsanei · Answer

Hi Clive.
Thank you for the correction. Would you send me the links to some of the topics in which this issue is discussed.
All dictionaries introduce fruits as an alternative for fruit as a plural.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fruits
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/fruit_1

My impression is that, when we are talking about different kinds of fruits, we can pluralize the fruit.
Having typed 'different fruits' in corpus of Contemporary American English(http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ ), I came to know that the results confirms my impression as well.
Regards
Hamid

Clive · Answer

Hi,

It's a valid word, and can certainly be used.
All I am saying is that I rarely read or hear it outside scientific and business English. And I never use it.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I can't find any links about it (or about anything else) because the Forum search function does not work, at last not for me.

Fish / fishes is a related topic, as most native speakers rarely talk about 'fishes'.
And food / foods.

Clive

Here is one, but there are better ones.

Also
and

Skin, rind and peel

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