quote:

It is said that no word rhymes with ORANGE. There is a musical recording Rhymes With Orange by Mario Grigorov. There is a comic strip with the same name by Hillary Price. Witchiepoo sang There Ain't No Rhyme for Oranges on H. R. Pufnstuf. Glenn Anderson reports a Canadian band called Rhymes With Orange had two hit recordings, Marvin and Toy Trains.

However, BLORENGE (a 1,833 ft. hill near Abergavenny, Wales) is given in O. V. Michaelsen's book Words At Play. SPORANGE looks as if it rhymes, but the word, which is short for sporangium, is pronounced spuh-RANJ.

The examples above meet the requirement that the last two syllables rhyme with ORANGE, since the final sylllable is unstressed. If we require only that the final syllable of the word match, then there are many other candidates for words which rhyme with orange. For example, Ng Boon Leong says that as English is pronounced in Singapore, RANGE, STONEHENGE, and DERANGE all rhyme with ORANGE. Bruce Salvisberg says the French given name SOLANGE rhymes with orange. Bruce Todd points out that the final syllable of CITRANGE is pronounced identically with the final syllable of ORANGE, and W3 shows an alternate pronunciation of SYRINGE which is also identical in the last syllable. Ian Eiloart provides BINGE, CRINGE, HINGE, M*NGE, IMPINGE, SINGE, TINGE, and WHINGE, and he provides this little poem:

Ted Hughes would constantly whinge, "There's no rhyme I think for orange" But wait, we misheard, For these were his words, "There's no wine to drink for a binge"
Some other words difficult to rhyme are MONTH, SILVER, WASP, and PURPLE. The rec.puzzles archive has (n + 1)th to rhyme with MONTH, and words such as SEVENTH, ELEVENTH, and THOUSANDTH could be considered rhymes. Ted Clarke provides CHILVER (British dialect for "ewe lamb" or "ewe mutton" and a surname) and GRUNTH (an alternate spelling of GRANTH) which rhymes with MONTH in one of its pronunciations. HIRPLE is a British word meaning "walk lamely" or "hobble." CURPLE is a Scottish term in W3 [Craig Lancaster]. HERPAL means "related to herpes" and is a Hindu name. WILVER is a given name; the best-known Wilver is baseball player Wilver "Willie" Stargell.

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale: Some other words difficult to rhyme are ..., SILVER ...

To find a rhyme for silver
Or any "rhymeless" rhyme,
Requires only will, ver-
bosity and time.
(by Stephten Sondheim)

To which Ira Levin replied with a poem discribing a lady who challenged him rhyme 'penguin'. He succeeded, and his poem ends:

"All right," she said, "so now rhyme silevr."
But I left because I'd had my filver.

If I had an entranceway,
I'd paint the whole thing orange.
I'd paint the door, the knob, the lock,
The threshold and the doorhinge.

Horrible birds!
Red, green, and purple.
If their pecking doesn't get you
The chirp'll.
- Randall M. Gee,

The four eng-
ineers,
Wear orange
Brassieres
- Jonathan S. Haas

“I’m Ing”, the Dean said. “I abhor Inj.”
And gloomily fed the orang an orange.
With a twinge he recalled how every month,
Disciplined for lisping (Dunce, not dunth!),
From the prefects’ room young Cringe would hirple
With prospects drear and buttocks purple.
Maybe thus the products of my quill were
Doomed to be lead, he mused, not silver.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Have any of you heard of "hurple?" I wrote the following limerick for the kids on Wordcraftjr:

I comtemplate why the word "purple"
Has no rhyme that is better than "slurple."
The same goes for "orange,"
Whose best rhyme is "forage."
Now I'm stuck! Oh, I just feel so "hurple!"

One of our members said that "hurple" was a real word, perhaps having something to do with horses. I couldn't find it in Onelook, though it was in OED as an alternate spelling of "hurkle," meaning:

intr. To draw the limbs and parts of the body closely together, esp. with pain or cold; to contract the body like a beast in a storm; to cower, crouch, squat; to shrink, shudder. Said also of the limbs: To be contracted or drawn together.

Do you know it? Is it sometimes called "hurple?"