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FRASIER’S FRIDAY FACT

Volume XCV

5/17/2019

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to Frasier's Friday Fact, where we cherish knowledge and continually build our mental database of useless information to use at parties.

If I asked you which came first, the name "orange" for the citrus fruit or the name "orange" the color, which would you guess? The color, right?

Well, you would guess wrong. The earliest recorded use of orange (the fruit) in English is from the 1300s, via a number of languages: the Old French orenge, adapted from the Arabic nāranj, from the Persian nārang, from the Sanskrit nāranga ("orange tree").

And what about orange, the color? It didn't show up for another 200 years, in the early 1500s. English speakers probably didn't have a specific name for the color until the fruit was widely available in their markets and inspired one. Before then, linguists believe people generally referred to orange as "yellow-red," or "ġeolurēad" in Old English.

Stay colorful, my friends.

Fraish