I was cooking bell peppers the other night and I was wondering about how bright coloured and nicely shaped they are. So I asked A why some fruits are fruits and some other "things" are just vegetable. He thought about it and said that maybe if they grow on trees they are fruits, on ground they are vegetables? I asked, well, how about strawberries? Then he wisely said that it must be more complicated.
Botany gives you the answer. If a "thing" comes from a flower, it's a fruit. You can pick it and it will keep on riping even after picking. The most interesting definition is that fruits are the ovaries of plants because they may contain seeds (a bit morbid, but it works as a way of explaining the concept). So technically even tomatoes (the Chinese are right, after all) are fruits. Botanically, zucchini, pumpkins and the like are all fruits, whatever the food industry taught us so far.
If the "thing" is a plant or a plant part, then it's a vegetable (roots, leaves ... ) and it doesn't usually contain seeds. After picking, it's stop riping, at the most it will rot.
Leaving botany aside, we usually distinguish between vegetables and fruits according to their flavour and taste or the use we make of them. If it's sweet and juicy, it's a fruit: if it's savory and used in more complex preparation, it's a vegetable. It's still good to know our botany, though.
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