Which came first - orange or orange?

Factual Questions
21

Thank you, zgy, that’s almost certainly where I saw it. I remember reading the book (for recreational math and puzzles, MG is close to Cecil himself, and not far behind on some other subjects too), but didn’t have the connection. The site www.canterburytales.org/canterbury_tales.html has the searchable text.

Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”

22

Well, if ‘bui:’ means ‘yellow’, does that mean the Irish are refering to these people as being of the character implied by the other meaning of the term ‘yellow’?

Ray (Don’t color me politically correct.)

23

Tagalog also doesn’t have a native word for orange (neither do they have terms for brown, except for people, or gray, or pink). They use “orens” which obviously comes from the English word for orange.

24

Eating an orange
While making love
Makes for a bizarre enj-
Oyment thereof.

-Tom Lehrer

(This of course is the American /'arindj/ pronunciation, not the Canadian /'orindj/.)

25

Thanks for the Chaucer cite. I last read both him (modernised. alas) and Martin Gardner back in my junior high days, before I got interested in colours. Now I’ll have to see to what he was referring.

I don’t think that bui: has the same negative semantic value as ‘yellow’, or else there wouldn’t be so many Boyds (<Sc. Gaelic buidhe) and Bowies. But I’ll find out.

26

A 1969 study showed that the main colors fit into six groups. No language has words in group 2 unless it has all the words in group 1; no language has words in group 3 unless it has all the words in groups 1 and 2, etc.

  1. Black and white
  2. Red
  3. Green and yellow
  4. Blue
  5. Brown
  6. Purple, pink, orange and gray

There are exceptions, of course.

John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams

27

Cecil’s column on the development of color concepts in language: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_168b.html