Shu gave me a very interesting book for Mother's Day, Barber's "Six Words You Never Knew Had Something to Do with Pigs." I am having fun with it!
I have found that orange came from a Sanskrit word naranga. The fruit was introduced by the Arabs into Sicily in the Middle Ages and from there into France. However, according to my book, "orange" the color was used in the early 1500s. The author wondered what word people used before that time to designate the color orange. She says there is some evidence that "saffron" was used in the late 1300s. Before that she assumes they didn't have a color and used either red or yellow. Does anyone know if there might have been an earlier word for the color orange?
By the way, the 6 words having something to do with pigs are: porcelain, screw (hmmm!), soil, porpoise, root, and swain.
Color words are interesting. There are many colors which I can differentiate yet have no words for. If I didn't know the words fuchsia or chartreuse, I'd probably just say a kind of red or yellow. Orange is a pretty unusual color in pre-aniline dye days.
I know we've discussed this before here, but there is a famous study (and at least two books) about color words from a linguistic POV: Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, (there's a new edition in print); and, C L Hardin (ed.) 2002. Color Categories in Thought and Language. Professor Kay has a site that collects information about what he calls the World Color Survey.This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,
Before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the colour was referred to as geoluhread in Old English, which translates roughly into Modern English as yellow-red.
I should have thought to look in Wikipedia. Thanks, Jerry! I should probably write the author of the book. I see they mentioned in that Wikipedia article that orange has no true rhyme.
BTW, Jerry, please check out the Spanish question in the foreign language forum. Thanks!
