# Orange oranges
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
**Created:** [June 24, 2010, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354 "2010-06-24T14:13:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/1 "2010-06-24T14:13:33Z")
From the article:
> **[What came first, orange or oranges?](https://www.straightdope.com/21341476/what-came-first-orange-or-oranges)**
> [@](#):
>
> _The first English use of the word “orange” as a color adjective appears to have been in 1620._
Wait. What? So, what did people in England call orange things before then? Perhaps, that’s just the earliest _recorded_ usage. But still, can we possibly know where basic adjectives – red, orange, big, little, and others came from? I mean, yikes, 1620? Really? I guess nothing orange appears in Beowulf, or the Canterbury Tales, but, wow, no earlier cookbooks, or lists of foodstuffs, crops gathered, etc. needed the word “orange?”
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### Author:  [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/2 "2010-06-24T14:25:06Z")
Are you serious? Color adjectives can be broad or narrow, depending on how many color adjectives are available in the lexicon. These even applies at the personal level–eg., you’re probably not familiar with the color [aureolin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aureolin). That doesn’t mean that you stare at aureolin-colored things and don’t know what to call them–you just call them ‘yellow’. Likewise, before the color term ‘orange’ migrated to English, English speakers probably called those things ‘red’ or ‘yellow’, or ‘yellowish-red’, or some other equivalent, depending on the exact shade and what color terms they _did_ have available …
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### Author:  [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/3 "2010-06-24T15:06:22Z")
Ahh … I see, maybe that’s why nothing in English rhymes with “orange”, it was totally adopted, 'around the 1600’s, from Continental terms, for a certain fruit, and then spred to describe the color of pumpkins, and other fruits. There must have been some, other, “yellowish-red” Old English word, that I just never heard of. Well, ignorance fought.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/4 "2010-06-24T15:14:44Z")
> [@Arkcon](#):
>
> Ahh … I see, maybe that’s why nothing in English rhymes with “orange”, it was totally adopted, 'around the 1600’s, from Continental terms, for a certain fruit, and then spred to describe the color of pumpkins, and other fruits. There must have been some, other, “yellowish-red” Old English word, that I just never heard of. Well, ignorance fought.
I went ahead and did the research for you, and after hours of digging through many olde bookes, I think I have the definitive answer:
_Yellowish-Red_.
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### Author:  [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/5 "2010-06-24T16:16:36Z")
As yet, the online _Historical Thesaurus of English_ has no synonyms for orange predating ‘orange’.
[http://libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/historicalthesaurus/sections2.php?groupx=01.04.09.07.10.%20%20.&nheading=Orange&word=orange](http://libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/historicalthesaurus/sections2.php?groupx=01.04.09.07.10.%20%20.&nheading=Orange&word=orange)
Which, as **SCSimmons** says, isn’t especially surprising. It may simply be that there were none.
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### Author:  [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/6 "2010-06-24T16:17:42Z")
“Red” (we still say “red hair” to this day), “ginger” (still used for human hair and cats in the UK), “yellow” (if “red” seemed too far off), and “tenné” (in heraldry) were all in use. “Yellow-red” would be more natural than “yellowish-red”, though I can’t offhand think of an example of either.
More generally, when this subject comes up, [this Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term) provides a basic introduction.
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### Author:  [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/7 "2010-06-24T18:35:15Z")
When did [Saffron](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron_(color))become popular? That’s kind of orange, and I would think it would crop up, at least in the upper classes when the spice trade was in full swing.
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### Author:  [@Ed\_Zotti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ed_Zotti)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/8 "2010-06-24T19:40:33Z")
Cecil long ago offered the following learned discourse on general color terminology:
> **[Could early man only see three colors?](https://www.straightdope.com/21341625/could-early-man-only-see-three-colors)**
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### Author:  [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/9 "2010-06-24T19:42:27Z")
> [@Arkcon](#):
>
> There must have been some, other, “yellowish-red” Old English word, that I just never heard of.
Just to clarify–that’s not necessarily the case. It’s important to keep in mind that we modern English speakers see orange as a color because we have a word for it–someone who speaks a language that doesn’t have an equivalent color word will look at the colors that we think of as shades of orange and probaby see them as different shades of red and yellow.
That Wikipedia article that **John W. Kennedy** links to has some good examples to help wrap your head around this concept. For example, if you ask an English speaker what basic color this text and this text are, they’ll say (as the BBCode coding does) that they’re both blue–one’s just dark blue and one’s light blue. But a Russian will describe them as two distinct colors, sinii and goluboi. A Russian (or an Italian, as their language also has basic color terms that distinguish these shades) might be as puzzled at our lack as you are at the possibility of the lack of a term for orange in another language. But it’s nothing complicated–the reality is the palette of visible colors, and the words are more or less arbitrary ways of dividing up that infinitely continuous palette of shades into color groups. Because the word orange was taught to you in kindergarten, it seems to you like a distinct ‘type of thing’ in the world–but if you’d been taught a different language growing up, you really wouldn’t see ‘orange things’ as a separate category. You’d just see different shades of red and yellow, with some fuzzy space between where the distinctions are arbitrary. (And which adding an ‘orange’ term wouldn’t remove, but multiply–now there are things on the fuzzy border between red and orange, and others on that fuzzy border between orange and yellow.)
What’s most amazing, once you understand all this, is (as is also mentioned in that article) that these arbitrary divisions of the color palette are actually pretty much language-independent. That is, any language with at least eleven basic color word has a word that is not only best translated to English as ‘orange’, but which really seems to mean ‘orange’. For example, supposing this language’s term ‘rellow’ is seen to refer to some items between red and yellow on the color palette; then, presenting native speakers with items that an English speaker would call ‘orange’ will result in them calling them ‘rellow’ to about the same extent that English speakers would agree that the items were orange rather than red or yellow. There aren’t any known languages where there’s only a rough equivalent–where that language’s ‘orange’ term is generally used to describe things that are yellower or redder than the things English speakers describe as orange. Nobody really knows why this is; but it does contribute to the natural feeling you have that orangeness is just a fact about a thing …
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### Author:  [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/10 "2010-06-24T22:11:01Z")
Interesting. I often wondered why Romantic poets used color adjectives that seemed overly pretentious and confusing, like puce.
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### Author:  [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2010, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/11 "2010-06-24T23:58:21Z")
Grass is traditionally “blue” in Welsh, although that is fading under English influence.
Few languages have a word for “pink”.
And, just to make it all harder, some people (mostly women) have four types of cone, and consequently can see colors that the rest of us can’t – and, on the other hand, to them, all color photography, silver or silicon, looks horribly wrong.
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### Author:  [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2010, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/12 "2010-06-25T02:45:04Z")
English originally used [tawny](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawny_%28color%29) for a large part of the colour we now refer to as orange. Other shades of orange would have been considered to be a dark yellow, or even a light brown.
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### Author:  [@RichardSRussell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RichardSRussell)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2010, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/13 "2010-06-25T14:50:19Z")
I’m surprised Cecil was addressing the color orange and didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to show off the depth of his knowledge by mentioning what it has in common with purple and silver.
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### Author:  [@LewisTM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LewisTM)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2010, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/14 "2010-06-25T14:55:35Z")
I wish Cecil would edit this column and write the proper french name for orange, which is also orange and not arange.
And don’t bother translating raisin, kiwi, plantain, tangerine, nectarine, lime … or “fruit”
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/15 "2010-06-25T15:42:47Z")
> [@LewisTM](#):
>
> I wish Cecil would edit this column and write the proper french name for orange, which is also orange and not arange.
> And don’t bother translating raisin, kiwi, plantain, tangerine, nectarine, lime … or “fruit”
There’s no doubt that Cecil could update this column–the wealth of information available today is superior to what he knew in 1975.
You want Cecil to use the modern spelling of the older _Old French_ word. While it’s _orange_ today, in the 1300s and before it was _orenge_. This in reference to the _Seville_ (or bitter) orange, the fruit, not the color.
To add, the French almost certainly got the word from the Italians. Who got it from the Arabs and Persians.
For what it’s worth, the term to mean a color, in English, is now cited in print by the OED back to 1557
> [@OED](#):
>
> 1. A bright reddish-yellow colour like that of the skin of a ripe orange; any one of a number of shades occupying the region between red and yellow in the spectrum. Also: a pigment or dye of this colour.
> cadmium, chrome, Mars, methyl orange, etc.: see the first element.
>
> 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. a1598 A. MONTGOMERIE Misc. Poems xxiv. 66, O wareit orange! willed me to weir.
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### Author:  [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2010, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/16 "2010-06-25T17:30:14Z")
> [@samclem](#):
>
> For what it’s worth, the term to mean a color, in English, is now cited in print by the OED back to 1557
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > …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.].…
D’ye think that’s an older spelling of puce, or… what colour would puke-coloured cloth be, anyway?
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2010, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/17 "2010-06-25T17:45:58Z")
> [@WotNot](#):
>
> D’ye think that’s an older spelling of puce, or… what colour would puke-coloured cloth be, anyway?
Good question. I had wondered about that myself.
> [@OED](#):
>
> Textiles. A superior kind of woollen cloth used for making gowns, hose, and other garments.
> 1465 in T. H. Turner Manners & Househ. Expenses Eng. (1841) 320 Item, a shorte gowne of blakke pewke ffurred wyth martres. 1471 J. PASTON in Paston Lett. & Papers (2004) I. 634, I haue desyered hym to lend me a gown of puke, and I haue send hym a typet of welvet to boredyre yt [rown]d a-bowthe. 1545 in G. J. Piccope Lancs. & Cheshire Wills (1860) II. 63 A new gowne of ffrenche puke lyned withe saten. 1562 in Wills & Inventories Archdeaconry Richmond (1853) 166 One gowne of fyne puke garded with veluett and furred with budge, xxvjs. viijd.
>
> 1. More fully puke colour. A colour formerly used for woollen goods, produced by galls and copperas and hence probably a very deep bluish black or dark brown colour, although variously described (see the quots.).
> Probably originally the usual colour of the cloth at sense 1.
>
> 1510 J. STANBRIDGE Vocabula sig. Civ, Piceus, puke. 1538 T. ELYOT Dict., Pullus,..russette, sometyme blacke, but rather puke color, betwene russet & black.
As to the color we know today as _puce_,
> [@OED](#):
>
> . n. A dark purple brown or brownish purple colour.
>
> 1781 T. HOLCROFT tr. Comtesse de Genlis Theatre Educ. IV. 128, I love none but gay colours, I cannot endure the prune de Monsieur, and the puce. 1843 New Monthly Mag. July 293 With little jackets, so smart and spruce, Of Lincoln green, sky-blue, or puce. 1857 G. W. S. PIESSE Art of Perfumery 149 When blue and red are united, the compound color is known as puce or violet. 1882 Garden 16 Sept. 260/1 Blooms of..rich dark puce, suffused with maroon. 1897 Daily News 25 June 2/6 The mountains had all put on..the purple puce of twilight. 1925 I. IRWIN in B. C. Williams O. Henry Prize Stories of 1924 1 Montjoy himself, big-nosed, mottle-faced, dull-eyed, the puce of his suit the exact shade of his hard cheeks. 1954 J. GRENFELL Turn back Clock (1983) 105 Her face turns a terrible puce. 2003 Quilter’s Newsletter Mag. Mar. 47/1 Madder browns were warm, reddish browns ranging from tan through the dark purplish-brown the dyers called chocolate… Another name for the purplish-brown is puce.
> B. adj. Of a purple brown or brownish purple colour.
> N. E. D. (1909) defines, etymologically, as: ‘Of a flea-colour’.
While I _think_ it’s the same color, the time frames would say no.
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2010, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/18 "2010-06-25T17:56:51Z")
Geez, it’s a good think we didn’t find out about kumquats before we got oranges…
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### Author:  [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2010, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/19 "2010-06-27T22:58:08Z")
> [@Bookkeeper](#):
>
> English originally used [tawny](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawny_%28color%29) for a large part of the colour we now refer to as orange.
In heraldry, more in Europe than Britain, this was the tincture _Tenné_.
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### Author:  [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2010, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orange-oranges/544354/20 "2010-06-28T15:37:30Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#):
>
> Few languages have a word for “pink”.
Interesting. Swedish has two.
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