Talk:Orange (word)

Suggested rhymes
What about doorhinge? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.61.87.207 (talk) 04:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Here is a rhyme with orange, it is "door hinge", you know the device that holds a standard door onto a wall when it swings open and close. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spaceman42 (talk • contribs) 07:06, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The two preceding comments were refactored to maintain chronological order. Cnilep (talk) 17:26, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Door hinge is mentioned in the section "Rhyme" as an example of compound words or phrases. Please note that this is a talk page for improvement of the article, not a forum for discussion of the word orange or of rhyming in general. Please feel free to read the page, discuss potential changes here, or simply be bold and edit the page if you can make real improvements. Cnilep (talk) 17:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

An example of a compound solution is found in the limerick "Orange Rhyme" by Michael Gregorovich: "There once was this girl Angeline/ Who knew how all things should have been/ When they said "Get the door, Ang"/ She said "It is orange/ But should have been painted pine green" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.76.62 (talk) 03:14, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

What about moorage?66.41.47.104 (talk) 09:16, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

What about "gay marriage"? And stop stealing solutions for this from Monkey Island 3 without quoting it (@door hinge people)!!!!1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.214.34.122 (talk) 17:11, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I am currently compiling a new style rhyming dictionary (60k words so far) which amongst other developments takes as a given that the sounds of 'r' and 'l' are very close (e.g. holler/horror) and that the 'j' sound matches fairly well with 'z' (or 'v'). Under these principles, the nearest rhymes with 'orange' (assuming a 'cot' dialect) are words like "Collins, Corrine's, florins" etc. (e.g. Your face is orange like Jackie Collins), which can be stretched to include "lozenge" as has been mentioned, or "bombings, lodgings, robins" etc. If you use the 'caught' dialect then several more can be found like, "drawings, moorings, callings" etc. which can be stretched to include "warnings, mornings" etc. hope this is of some use y'all

Hillbillyholiday81 (talk) 23:51, 15 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Do "zero range" or "low range" rhyme with orange? (non-native speaker here). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.12.200.97 (talk) 18:20, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Late use as a basic colour word
The section 'Late use as a basic colour word' cites several sources, but none of these directly assert that orange became a basic color word after 1960, nor in the nineteenth century, nor the eighteenth. The Life magazine article cited uses the word yellow-red and notes that this is the "logical name" used in the Munsell system. From the article Munsell color system, though, it appears that orange is still not used in that system.

The Oxford English Dictionary does cite orangish first from 1888, but orange in the sense of "any one of a number of shades occupying the region between red and yellow in the spectrum" from as early as 1557 or 1591. "1557 in Great Brit. Statutes at Large VI. 100 Coloured cloth of any other colour or colours..hereafter mentioned, that is to say, scarlet, red, crimson, morrey, violet, pewke, brown, blue, black, green, yellow, blue, orange, [etc.]."

"1591 in R. Pitcairn Criminal Trials Scotl. (1833) I. ii. 254 Fyve clewis of sindrie culloures of worsett as blak, reid, orange, yallow and blew."

In any case, this all seems like synthesizing sources to support the assertion that orange became a basic color word at some recent time. I'd be happier if there were some secondary or tertiary sources directly stating that idea. Cnilep (talk) 02:00, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I've been unsuccessful in finding published literature suggesting that orange became an English basic color word during the twentieth century. Berlin and Kay (1969), later work by Paul Kay, and most of the critiques of B&K I've seen give it as a basic color term in English. One article review of B&K 1969 (Conklin 1973) suggests that orange became a "primary color" (not quite the same thing as a "basic color term") following Newton's use in 1730.
 * "Orange and indigo seem to have been added partly in order to complement his [Newton's] theory associating the precisely indicated relative widths of the seven "prismatick" primaries with the seven musical tones or intervals in an octave. Whatever the reasons, Newton's scientific reputation was such that many authors have continued to repeat this particular sequence of color names down to the present time whenever they discuss the colors in the spectrum, despite the fact that few of these authors or their readers would find indigo, for example, to be a high-level, let alone basic, color term in their own usage."


 * Again, though, so far all we have is synthesis from primary or not-quite-relevant sources. Therefore I find the section very troubling. Cnilep (talk) 03:02, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Again, though, so far all we have is synthesis from primary or not-quite-relevant sources. Therefore I find the section very troubling. Cnilep (talk) 03:02, 12 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I've removed the section for now. If anyone has sources that are directly on-point, please restore the text from page history. Cnilep (talk) 00:24, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I was reading this article after I looked up the etymology of the Dutch word 'oranje' and I read the first usage for the word as the colour, was in the 16th century. While this may be true of the English language, the Dutch Etymological Dictionary writes about a manuscript from 1282 in which the word 'araenge' was used in the broadcloth-industry describing the colours of a cloth. http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/oranje1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.73.175.37 (talk) 11:17, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Rhymetime with Eminem
60 Minutes.

Eminem can rhyme orange.

Suggest this could be added to the article somehow?

&mdash; Cirt (talk) 15:51, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Eminem is currently cited in the section 'Rhyme'. Cnilep (talk) 02:03, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: withdrawn. In fact, I almost undid the edit that created this move request after realizing that there would be a major link disambiguation issue if this move were to occur. I left this move request anyways, and now, the opposers have convinced me to withdraw this request. Steel1943 (talk) 08:04, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

– The article Orange (word) seems to meet the standards as outlined in WP:DABCONCEPT as the initiate primary topic for the term "orange" due to encompassing the meanings of both of the co-dominant primary topics: the color and the fruit. Steel1943 (talk) 18:16, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Orange (word) → Orange
 * Orange → Orange (disambiguation)
 * NOTE to the closing admin, in case of move, the target page has a talk archive subpage, as does this one. -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 04:53, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment see Talk:Orange (fruit)-- &#9790;Loriendrew&#9789;  &#9743;(talk)  05:21, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose first per WP:PRIMARY. The primary is obviously the fruit, from whence all other usages sprang. Orange (word) is (obviously) about the WORD, and is mostly a very obscure etymological article, so it cannot and should not be moved. Orange should redirect to Orange (fruit), because again, the fruit is primary and the source of all other usages. Softlavender (talk) 06:38, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I disagree that this page qualifies as a WP:DABCONCEPT. In order for it to qualify, per the guideline, "a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type". This page is about the etymology and origin of the word, which is not really "an instance or example of" the botanical and production aspects of the fruit; or the history, art, science and culture of the colour. Such a connection from the etymology may be too obscure for the average reader. As whether there is really a primary topic here, I basically stated in the previous move discussion that there should not be one. In terms of "long-term significance", both the fruit and the colour are equally, elementary, core, vital subjects that are each notable in there own right. And there is no evidence that suggests that people typing orange are much more likely to mean the fruit than the colour, the word, or anything else. Even if the colour was named after the fruit, that etymology and origin too may be obscure for the average reader. Zzyzx11 (talk) 07:46, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Italicisation of article title
See current discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles. I propose to keep the discussion there, not here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:59, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Margaret Tudor
I removed the mention of Margaret Tudor, since the OED doesn't include the same attestation that St. Clair notes and the OED footnote was left on the sentence. That said, St. Clair's 1502 'slevys of orenge color' does pre-date the OED's 1557 list of cloth colours in British statutes. On the third hand, though, an overly specific citation may eventually be disproven if someone comes along with e.g. a 1501 mention. If you want to re-add the 1502 attestation, maybe a little more hedging would be in order, as well as not appearing to attribute the date to OED? (Also, I removed the WorldCat URL, since oclc= already links to WorldCat.) Cnilep (talk) 02:47, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I copied over what was written in orange (colour) instead. It separates the two possible first instances. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 02:51, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Added "blorange"
I'm mentioning it here because I expect kneejerk reversion from the kind of misguided pedant who would rather tear "glacier" out of the dictionary than admit there is a word that violates "i before e". But see the cited Wiktionary entry at, or simply find the thousands of legitimate uses in Google. Equinox ◑ 05:50, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * That's not a bad example, but there are a number of problems here. First, Wiktionary or other user-generated content are not usually accepted as references for Wikipedia. Second, any potentially controversial content (and your reference to "knee-jerk reversion" suggests that you think this is potentially controversial) needs a citation. Third, there are already other less-common words (The Blorenge, Goringe) mentioned in the section, so this slang word hardly seems so vital to the section as to ignore all rules. I presume that some non-user-generated secondary sources, such as slang dictionaries, may exist. Let's find some and cite them. Cnilep (talk) 06:57, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Found one! It's in dictionary.com, which I believe is published by Random House. Cnilep (talk) 07:12, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The dictionary.com article suggests blorange was a fashion portmanteau neologism, popular in 2017, but unclear as to whether it was supposed to be "blond-orange" or "blood-red-orange" --2A00:23C6:148A:9B01:B4BA:46:D644:9CF0 (talk) 11:28, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Etymology with lost leading n
Orange is one of a few words that lost its leading n as it moved between languages (cf. naranja in Spanish which came from Arabic, in turn from other languages tracing back to India). Might this be noted? --2A00:23C6:148A:9B01:B4BA:46:D644:9CF0 (talk) 11:28, 6 July 2023 (UTC)