Entry · Saturday, June 27, 2026
Heritage Tomato
/HEHR-ih-tij tuh-MAY-toh/ n.- 1. Any tomato variety of pre-industrial lineage, open-pollinated and stubbornly unreformed, whose silhouette owes nothing to the requirements of a shipping container; esp. one whose equator arrives before you expect it and continues past where you thought it would stop.
- 2. colloq. Produce with hips. The stem end is a formality.
"The farmer's market in Williamsburg had a wooden crate of thiccc heritage tomatoes stacked under raking morning light, each one wider than the last, each one apparently unaware that round was an option. The woman running the stall had stopped apologizing for the irregular shapes sometime around 2019."
From Old English heretage (via Old French héritage, from hériter, to inherit, from Latin hereditare) + Late Middle English tomato, from Spanish tomate, from Nahuatl tomatl. The Nahuatl root means 'the swelling fruit,' which the heritage variety took as a personal challenge.
Filed by
The rotundity on this tomato is historical, documented, and frankly almost too much for a farmers' market.
Ruling ADMITTED, WITH A FOOTNOTE
The filer wrote 'aesthetic rotundity.' Rotundity is not aesthetic. It is structural. The profile is on record. Admitted.
In the margin
The entry says it could be mistaken for a small solar system. That is not a warning. That is a recommendation.
Also received REJECTED
Submitted: a drinking straw. A straw is basically a tube of potential, and after the tomato I think we owe cylindrical objects a second look.
It is a straw. It is a cylinder. It is thin. No.