I was sitting on the floor yesterday, watching Trombone play with a box of crayons. Actually, I was napping while he played with a box of crayons. Periodically he would pull one out of the box and yell, “Gurble!” and I would open my eyes and say, “That’s a RED crayon,” and then close my eyes again and he would quietly take a few minutes to put the crayon back in the box and pull out another one.<\/p>\n
Hey, it was pissing rain and something resembling zero degrees outside and if we can’t amuse ourselves inside it is going to be a very long life until grade 1, I tell you what.<\/p>\n
After a few iterations, I felt guilty so I got more creative. “That’s a BLUE crayon. The sky, Smurfs, blueberries and rotten cheese – those things are all blue. What’s a Smurf? Another time.” It was when I was describing orange, “Dyed cheese and apricots and pumpkins and, well, oranges…are all orange,” that I realized how weird it is that orange is both a noun and an adjective. Wouldn’t it be strange if we called bananas “yellows”? <\/p>\n
I went to the Internet, expecting a long, arduous search because if I had never thought about this in 33 years of life, surely no one else would have.<\/i> I am ashamed to report, though, that not only has most of the world already had this little brain wave but it’s a straight dope CLASSIC <\/a> so, uh, yeah. I guess I’ve been busy? Thinking about other stuff?<\/p>\n The noun came first. Cecil (above) says the first utterance of “orange” as an adjective was recorded in 1620 but another site <\/a> said it was in 1512 in the court of Henry VIII and this answer appeals more to my imagination. That same site says that, “Before [orange] was introduced to the English-speaking world, the colour was referred to (in Old English) as geoluhread, which translates into Modern English as yellow-red,” and I am inclined to believe this wholeheartedly as well.<\/p>\n Somewhat related:<\/p>\n I ate my first mandarin orange of the season (whoever’s season it is…) today. It was sublime. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was sitting on the floor yesterday, watching Trombone play with a box of crayons. Actually, I was napping while he played with a box of crayons. Periodically he would pull one out of the box and yell, “Gurble!” and … Continue reading