the.com/tomahto
the vowel shift that launched a thousand irrelevant arguments about compromise.
means a regional pronunciation of tomato, used almost exclusively to mean it does not actually matter.
from popularized by the 1937 gershwin song let's call the whole thing off, where lovers list pronunciation differences as proxy for irreconcilable ones — potato/potahto, tomato/tomahto.
song contextgershwin wrote it for a fred astaire ginger rogers film
real splitreflects genuine british versus american vowel patterns
modern usenow shorthand for any pointless semantic disagreement