I have a question about oranges

Is an orange called an orange because it's orange, or is orange orange because oranges are orange?

And have you ever noticed how weird that word looks?

:D

I know, I've tried....

They have great difficulty with the idea that it's really two syllables....You have to teach them the short "O" sound and the "rin" sound and make sure that they hear it's a "juh" on the end, not a "guh".

But then they think that the "juh" is an extra syllable, so instead of "o-rinj" you get "o-rin-juh".

I have stood marching a whole class shouting "ONE-TWO, O-RINJ" with the class replying "ONE-TWO, O-RIN-JUH!", skipping oddly on the last extra syllable instead of keeping time....

We even had one poor kid who got it right and pronounced "orange" perfectly, only for her mother (who was in the classroom) to walk over and smack her and insist "O-rin-juh" was the correct pronunciation.....

To be fair, they eventually got it and these kids were only about 4 / 5 years old, so it can't have been easy.

You should hear a bunch of country folk from Alabama trying to pronounce French.

Merde!

Am I right? Been a while since I was in Alabama.

more like fray-unch. The Georgians do the free-inch.

From "Etymologically Speaking"

Orange (Eng.); Orange (Fr.); Naranja (Sp.); Arancia (It.)
Interestingly, none of these terms come from the Latin word for orange, citrus aurentium; instead, they all come from the ancient Sanskrit naga ranga, which literally means "fatal indigestion for elephants." In certain traditions the orange, not the apple, is the fruit responsible for original sin. There was an ancient Malay fable--which made its way into the Sanskrit tongue around the Seventh or Eighth Centuries B.C.--that links the orange to the sin of gluttony and has an elephant as the culprit. Apparently, one day an elephant was passing through the forest, when he found a tree unknown to him in a clearing, bowed downward by its weight of beautiful, tempting oranges; as a result, the elephant ate so many that he burst. Many years later a man stumbled upon the scene and noticed the fossilized remains of the elephant with many orange trees growing from what had been its stomach. The man then exclaimed, "Amazing! What a naga ranga (fatal indigestion for elephants)!"

http://www.westegg.com/etymology/

This makes me think that the color usage derived from the fruit usage.

because nux scooped me on the google, by a full 3 minutes.

:P

B-)

is door hinge the only thing that comes close to rhyming with orange?

If you accept that "Juan" rhymes with "shoe on", it should work. I like "door hinge", though. Any poems you know that have used it?

Syringe?

Cringe?

Close but no cigar.

But nobody has the rhyme? C'mon, my 11 year old daughter got it without thinking about it.

borange, corange, dorange, forange, gorange, horange (whoreange?), jorange, korange, lorange, morange, norange, porange, qorange, rorange, sorange, torange, vorange, worange (whoreange?), xorange, yorange, zorange.

Is it in there somewhere???

of course some folks pronounce it oar-nj instead of are-inj...

That extra syllable just needs to be incorporated into the flow of the poetry:

Caterpillar's coat grows ever still oranger
Bright warning offers a seasonal harbinger.


(good grief)

It's the name "Marge" spoken by a person with his jaw wired shut!

What do I win?

A pepper.

§

Orange.

:evilgrin:

I read my Santayana! I know there's only one essence of "orange!"

:P

The Color of Food

Part 2: Permissible color additives are natural and man-made dyes


To Color Or Not To Color
There is a growing movement toward usage of organic products with no additives, but truth be told, many people would find untouched foodstuffs inedible to the eye. Butter is normally white, but colored yellow for eye appeal. Off-colored foods may be perfectly edible and delicious, but may seem inferior by appearance. For example, often tree-ripened oranges are sprayed with a red coloring to correct the natural orangy-brown or mottled green color of their peels to the bright orange we expect. Food coloring is added to ice creams and sherbets to again meet consumer expectations. Would a candied apple taste as good without that bright red coating? Of course it would, but sales would drop dramatically.
snip
<http://homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/aa020298a.htm>

The oranges from the orange tree outside are perfectly orange. Maybe other oranges from lesser regions need help. </SoCal snobbery>

:D