[massachubatts]
what would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
that about sums it up.
gather ye 'round, my kitties, the word for today is...
orange, both in fruit and color form.
whilst joined at the dinner table this evening, some hours past, my dining companion put it to me, most unexpectedly, that it was a curious peculiarity of our language that the words for the fruit and its eponymous hue are identical. in none other of the languages we could think of (spanish, arabic, norwegian, turkish, or italian) was this the case. from this arose a series of quandaries: is the color named after the fruit, or was it the other way around? further, since english is germanic with a heavy romantic influence, and the fruit is appelsin in norwegian (germanic) and naranja in spanish (romance), how did we get stuck with orange (clearly not thinking creatively)? and lastly, if the name for the color did come from the fruit, what was the color called prior to the availability of citrus in medieval britain? without a name, does a color exist?
i was dying to find out.
and here we go: the name for the fruit entered the language in the early 13th century from old french, where it was, confusingly, pomme d'orenge, "apple of orange," probably after the same in italian, melarancio, although this doesn't appear in writing until the 14th century. ultimately it's from sanskrit, and likely some earlier dravidian language, nāraṅgaḥ. further confounding the whole business is that there were real pomes, that is pears and apples, also labeled "oranges," and even more meddling from the unrelated french surname, place name, and dutch principality, originally orenge. some of this meddling likely accounts for the spelling changes and the loss of the initial n.
so, this orange that made its way into 13th century england was not the fruit we think of today (and certainly not the navel orange, which wouldn't appear for another four hundred years and six thousand miles away), however, but rather the bitter orange, the stuff of perfume, herbal medicine, earl grey tea, and medieval christmas presents. far more deliciously, it's also the stuff of cuban food, glögg, and hoegaarden beer, of which we should be overjoyed that i do not have in great supply.
the sweet orange that we all know and love and dance around the dimly-lit apartment with to slow, sexy music performed by men who weren't afraid to wear platform shoes when, ahem, today appeared on the scene from china in the 16th century, hence the confusion in germanic languages: "china apple" - sinaasappel, apfelsine, and appelsin (dutch, german, norwegian).
as for the color, it just simply didn't exist until about the mid-16th century, when it was adopted from the fruit. anglo-saxon had geoluréad, "yellow-red," but more generally just used the oldest color of all, "red," which at the time included modern purple, pink, and orange. it's for this reason, i believe, that something buried deep within the primeval linguistic subconscious of native english speakers tells us that fire is red, and not in fact the color that it mostly appears: orange. fire is too old for orange.
and finally, for those who would suggest nothing rhymes with orange, tell it to the blorenge mountain in wales and a few hundred people named gorringe. tim gorringe works with muon beams, whatever the hell those are, and will probably kill you with radiation. take that.
so there you have it, girls and boys. go and have beautiful children or something.
it's not for you, you know. no offense. here's to four years of words of the day.
all twenty four of them.
oh. one last thing: the honorary word for today, all this week, the last thirteen months, and likely the decade is..
oh fuck it. if i told you now, you'd just go look it up and ruin everything.
it doesn't mean what you think.
[kaboom.]
that about sums it up.
gather ye 'round, my kitties, the word for today is...
orange, both in fruit and color form.
whilst joined at the dinner table this evening, some hours past, my dining companion put it to me, most unexpectedly, that it was a curious peculiarity of our language that the words for the fruit and its eponymous hue are identical. in none other of the languages we could think of (spanish, arabic, norwegian, turkish, or italian) was this the case. from this arose a series of quandaries: is the color named after the fruit, or was it the other way around? further, since english is germanic with a heavy romantic influence, and the fruit is appelsin in norwegian (germanic) and naranja in spanish (romance), how did we get stuck with orange (clearly not thinking creatively)? and lastly, if the name for the color did come from the fruit, what was the color called prior to the availability of citrus in medieval britain? without a name, does a color exist?
i was dying to find out.
and here we go: the name for the fruit entered the language in the early 13th century from old french, where it was, confusingly, pomme d'orenge, "apple of orange," probably after the same in italian, melarancio, although this doesn't appear in writing until the 14th century. ultimately it's from sanskrit, and likely some earlier dravidian language, nāraṅgaḥ. further confounding the whole business is that there were real pomes, that is pears and apples, also labeled "oranges," and even more meddling from the unrelated french surname, place name, and dutch principality, originally orenge. some of this meddling likely accounts for the spelling changes and the loss of the initial n.
so, this orange that made its way into 13th century england was not the fruit we think of today (and certainly not the navel orange, which wouldn't appear for another four hundred years and six thousand miles away), however, but rather the bitter orange, the stuff of perfume, herbal medicine, earl grey tea, and medieval christmas presents. far more deliciously, it's also the stuff of cuban food, glögg, and hoegaarden beer, of which we should be overjoyed that i do not have in great supply.
the sweet orange that we all know and love and dance around the dimly-lit apartment with to slow, sexy music performed by men who weren't afraid to wear platform shoes when, ahem, today appeared on the scene from china in the 16th century, hence the confusion in germanic languages: "china apple" - sinaasappel, apfelsine, and appelsin (dutch, german, norwegian).
as for the color, it just simply didn't exist until about the mid-16th century, when it was adopted from the fruit. anglo-saxon had geoluréad, "yellow-red," but more generally just used the oldest color of all, "red," which at the time included modern purple, pink, and orange. it's for this reason, i believe, that something buried deep within the primeval linguistic subconscious of native english speakers tells us that fire is red, and not in fact the color that it mostly appears: orange. fire is too old for orange.
and finally, for those who would suggest nothing rhymes with orange, tell it to the blorenge mountain in wales and a few hundred people named gorringe. tim gorringe works with muon beams, whatever the hell those are, and will probably kill you with radiation. take that.
so there you have it, girls and boys. go and have beautiful children or something.
it's not for you, you know. no offense. here's to four years of words of the day.
all twenty four of them.
oh. one last thing: the honorary word for today, all this week, the last thirteen months, and likely the decade is..
oh fuck it. if i told you now, you'd just go look it up and ruin everything.
it doesn't mean what you think.
[kaboom.]