Why is it that the fruit, the Orange, is the color Orange?
Has anyone else ever thought about that?
Was the fruit named after the color or the color named after the fruit?
As Davy Keith from L.M.Montgomery series of Anne would say:
" Anne? Really, I want to know!"
2 comments:
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the English word "orange" was imported around 1300 AD from Old French, "orenge". The French got it from the Latin "pomum de orenge", which came in turn from the Italian, "arancia". When the Italians first began using it, though, it was "narancia" or "naranza", because they got it from Venetian sailors trading with the Arabs, who called it "naranj" because they learned of the fruit from the Persians who called it "narang" because that's what the Indians, who first cultivated oranges, called it in Sanskrit - "naranga", "orange tree".
(Maybe that's why nothing rhymes properly with "orange"...)
Anyway, it wasn't used to describe a color until 1542, a couple centuries after it was used in English to begin with, so the color must have been named after the fruit! :D
Hey Thursday!
Thanks so much for the comment, and for the info!
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