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Comment by willsoon | Hacker News Reader

You are right. You are thinking correctly. But "the apple is red" might not mean that this particular apple belongs ---to put it in your wording--- to the category red, but that the category of things we call apple also belongs to the category of things that are red. And generally speaking, I think that is the meaning.

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> but that the category of things we call apple also belongs to the category of things that are red

No, in English this would be “apples are red”, not “the apple is red”.

I don't disagree though perhaps it's worth mentioning that sentences such as "the great spotted woodpecker is a medium-sized woodpecker" are used in English with the meaning "great spotted woodpeckers are medium-sized woodpeckers" so it seems to me that "apples are red" is grammatically a possible meaning of "the apple is red" even if it would be stylistically and pragmatically so weird that nobody would ever do that except perhaps as some kind of joke.

Indeed, and even with apples, we can say "the apple is native to Central Asia" without meaning a particular apple.

Except that apples can also be green, whereas great spotted woodpeckers are always a medium-sized woodpecker species. So 'the apple is red" implies at least a red variety of apples, never all apples, so "the" doesn't cover the whole group. But "the great spotted woodpecker is a medium-sized woodpecker" does cover the whole group (species). "The" can be either a definite or indefinite article, depending on context. That in turh changes "is" between equivalence and implication.

"An apple is red" does not imply that "Red is an apple". Use of the indefinite article makes the non-equivalence clearer.

grammatically you'd capitalize Great Spotted Woodpecker, and similarly if speaking of all apples as a category, Apple should form a proper noun

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