Orange (word)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look up orange in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Orange is both a noun and an adjective in the English language. In both cases, it refers primarily to the orange fruit and the colour orange, but has many other derivative meanings.

Before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the colour was referred to as geoluhread in Old English, which translates roughly into Modern English as yellow-red (pronounced the same).

1 Etymology
2 Rhyme
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Etymology

Orange derives from Sanskrit nāraṅgaḥ "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 (cf. Tamil 'nram', Tulu 'nregi').

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 (conflation).

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 the fruit is known as Sinaasappel or Appelsien (both derived from "Chinese apples"), and words similar to Appelsien are found in a number of Germanic, Slavic, and Ural-Altaic languages. A few other Slavic languages use words derived from Latin "Pomum aurantium", which similarly meant "Golden apples" -- as did the Ancient Greek term, Chrisomilia. The modern Hebrew "Tapuah Zahav" also means "Golden Apple" but can be shortened to "Tapuz". Modern Greek, and many languages of the Middle East -- from Ethiopia to Azerbaijan to Romania -- use words derived from the country name "Portugal", at one time the major source of imported oranges in the Middle East. See this comprehensive discussion about the etymology of the word "Orange" in various languages.

[edit] Rhyme

It is widely accepted that no single English word is a true rhyme for orange, though there are half rhymes such as lozenge or flange.^[1] The phrase door hinge rhymes with orange in some dialects. Although sporange, a variant of sporangium, is an eye rhyme for orange, it is not a true rhyme as its second syllable is pronounced with an unreduced vowel [-ændʒ], and often with stress.

However, there are proper nouns which are true rhymes, including Blorenge, a hill in Wales, and Gorringe, a surname. US Naval Commander Henry Honychurch Gorringe, the captain of the USS Gettysburg who discovered Gorringe Ridge in 1875^[2], led Arthur Guiterman to quip in "Local Note":

In Sparkill buried lies that man of mark

Who brought the Obelisk to Central Park,

Redoubtable Commander H.H. Gorringe,

Whose name supplies the long-sought rhyme for "orange."

Some nonce words have been coined specifically to rhyme with orange, such as:

grorange — a blend of green and orange (occurs in a Mario Brothers novel)
borange — "rubbish", "of poor quality" (coined by comedian Ross Noble on the Triple J Ross & Terri show).

Compounds or sequences of words may give true or near rhymes in some accents. Examples include door-hinge, torn hinge, or inch, a wrench.

Enjambment can also provide for rhymes. One example is Willard Espy's poem, "The Unrhymable Word: Orange":

The four eng-

ineers

Wore orange

brassieres.

An even more strained example by Tom Lehrer relies on the New York-New Jersey accent's way of pronouncing orange as "ar-ange":

Eating an orange

While making love

Makes for bizarre enj-

oyment thereof.