Orange is both a noun and an adjective in the English language. Both refer to many things (see orange (disambiguation)), but primarily the orange fruit and the colour orange. Interestingly, the colour was referred to (in Old English, before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit) as geoluhread, which transliterates into Modern English as yellow-red or yellored (both pronounced the same).

Etymology

Orange derives from Sanskrit ' "orange tree", with borrowings through Persian nārang, Arabic nāranj, Spanish naranja, Late Latin arangia, Italian arancia or arancio, and Old French orenge, in chronological order. The first appearance in English dates from the 14th century. The name of the colour is derived from the fruit, first appearing in this sense in the 16th century.

Multiple sources conjecture that the Sanskrit word itself derives from an unknown Dravidian source, based on the historical spread of oranges through the world.

There is disagreement as to whether the Old French borrowed the Italian melarancio (with mela "fruit", i.e. melarancio "fruit of the orange tree") as pume orenge (with pume "fruit") (deMause, 1998), or whether it borrowed Arabic nāranj, with no intermediate step (AHD, 2000). In any case, the initial n was lost before the word entered English.

The French shift from arenge to orenge may have been influenced by the French word or (gold) — in reference to the colour of oranges — or by the name of Orange, France, a major distribution point of oranges to northern regions. The name of the village did not derive from the word: in Old Provençal, it was known as Aurenja, with the initial sound later shifting (McPhee, 1975) (the original Roman name of the village was Arausio and came from a Celtic water god). The village name and fruit name thus converged coincidentally, one becoming associated with the other.

Later, the sovereign principality of Orange was the property of the House of Orange (later House of Orange-Nassau), which adopted both fruit and colour (already associated with the principality) as its symbols. Many things were in turn named after this royal House, which is the present ruling monarchy of the Netherlands. In Dutch, however, as well as in the Nordic languages, the fruit is known as "Chinese apples."

Rhyme

Orange is notable as one of the most common words in English that does not rhyme with any other word. The closest "real" approximation is door-hinge, although torn hinge and flange [1] have also been suggested.

Some made-up words have rhymed with orange:

• grorange — a blend of green and the color orange (found in a Mario Brothers novel)
• korange — a hypothetical hybrid of the orange and the kumquat
• borange — "rubbish", "of poor quality" (a coinage of comedian Ross Noble on the Triple J Ross & Terri show).

Tom Lehrer once rhymed "orange" in the verse:

Eating an orange

While making love

Makes for bizarre enj-

oyment thereof.

This is an example of extreme enjambement and the New York-New Jersey accent's way of pronouncing orange as "ar-ange."

The Flaming Lips included the following verse in their 1993 song "She Don't Use Jelly":

I know a girl who reminds me of Cher

She's always changing the color of her hair

She don't use nothing that ya buy at the store

She likes her hair to be real orange

She uses tangerines

In this case, the rhyme is achieved by slurring the last syllable of orange, emphasizing the rhyme of or- with store.

A children's rhyme from Mother Goose features a rhyme with orange as part of a solution for another tricky word, porringer:

What is the rhyme for porringer?

The king he had a daughter fair

And give the Prince of Orange her.

In Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book, Christina Rossetti wrote What is Pink? which begins:

What is pink? a rose is pink

By the fountain's brink.

What is red? a poppy's red

In its barley bed.

It continues assigning colours to objects, and it ends with orange:

What is orange? why, an orange,

Just an orange!

This plays on the fact that oranges are orange, and that no "proper" rhyme exists.

References

• John McPhee (1975). Oranges. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-51297-3.
• Neil deMause (April 8, 1998). The Mavens' Word of the Day.
• AHD (2000). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition, entry: orange.

See also

• English words with uncommon properties