4 ms·

I’m more interested in why the re-use of the same word to mean orange the colour and orange the fruit happens in different languages. Other fruits are orange.

I’m more interested in why the re-use of the same word to mean orange the colour and orange the fruit happens in different languages. Other fruits are orange. No other colour is named the same as a fruit.

freeone3000 6y ago
Plum, peach, and grape are all color-names, and naming colors after a natural item was and remains common. Orange was derived the same way -- from the fruit. Prior to the 1500s, when the fruit was introduced to England, things were described as "saffron-red", "yellow-red", or simply "red" when we would today call them orange. (There's a really interesting perceptual thing going on here -- if you don't have a word for a color, you don't perceive the color: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/hoffman_01_13/ http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/hoffman_01_13/ ) As for non-English: you can trace the spread of the fruit across the Mediterranean by tracking the word appearance. But this only works for European languages... Because Asian languages have a word for orange unrelated to the fruit! In Chinese, the word remains "saffron".
- stephenr 6y ago
  I don’t believe I’ve ever heard those first three used as a colour. Also the double use of orange does carry into at least one Asian language (which is why it strikes me as a weird similarity): Thai. Even weirder is what is most commonly available as an “orange” in Thailand isn’t really orange on the outside - they have mottled green/orange skin.
  - filleduchaos 6y ago
    > I don’t believe I’ve ever heard those first three used as a colour. That's a bit unusual - plum and peach in particular are so common in use as colours that they're part of the HTML colour names (as `peachpuff` and `plum`). Even if you haven't, surely you've heard of lime, olive, tomato, etc being used as colours?
    - stephenr 6y ago
      Lime green - sure. Olive green? Sure. Tomato? No I have never heard that used as a colour name unless you think “as red as a tomato” is a colour name.
      - jachee 6y ago
        Clearly you've never shopped for paint [0] or used X11 color names[1]. [0] https://www.sherwin-williams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/homeowners/color/find-and-explore-colors/paint-colors-by-family https://www.sherwin-williams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/h... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names
        stephenr 6y ago
        I've shopped for paint numerous times in the last few years. I cannot even being to imagine wanting to paint my house any colour that is even vaguely similar to that of a fruit. And no, I don't know the X11 colour names, because - and brace yourself this may be shocking - not everyone uses X11.
- yorwba 6y ago
  > Because Asian languages have a word for orange unrelated to the fruit! In Chinese, the word remains "saffron". Maybe you're thinking of a different Asian language or a time before the introduction of oranges in China, but in modern Mandarin, the term is some variation of (橙/橘)(黄)色, the (yellow) color of (oranges/tangerines).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DanBC 6y ago
  Yes. To support your point about colours being named after natural things, here's a colour chart from the 18th century. https://www.c82.net/werner/#preface https://www.c82.net/werner/#preface

freeone3000 6y ago

Plum, peach, and grape are all color-names, and naming colors after a natural item was and remains common. Orange was derived the same way -- from the fruit. Prior to the 1500s, when the fruit was introduced to England, things were described as "saffron-red", "yellow-red", or simply "red" when we would today call them orange. (There's a really interesting perceptual thing going on here -- if you don't have a word for a color, you don't perceive the color: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/hoffman_01_13/ http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/hoffman_01_13/ ) As for non-English: you can trace the spread of the fruit across the Mediterranean by tracking the word appearance. But this only works for European languages... Because Asian languages have a word for orange unrelated to the fruit! In Chinese, the word remains "saffron".

stephenr 6y ago
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard those first three used as a colour. Also the double use of orange does carry into at least one Asian language (which is why it strikes me as a weird similarity): Thai. Even weirder is what is most commonly available as an “orange” in Thailand isn’t really orange on the outside - they have mottled green/orange skin.
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  > I don’t believe I’ve ever heard those first three used as a colour. That's a bit unusual - plum and peach in particular are so common in use as colours that they're part of the HTML colour names (as `peachpuff` and `plum`). Even if you haven't, surely you've heard of lime, olive, tomato, etc being used as colours?
  - stephenr 6y ago
    Lime green - sure. Olive green? Sure. Tomato? No I have never heard that used as a colour name unless you think “as red as a tomato” is a colour name.
    - jachee 6y ago
      Clearly you've never shopped for paint [0] or used X11 color names[1]. [0] https://www.sherwin-williams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/homeowners/color/find-and-explore-colors/paint-colors-by-family https://www.sherwin-williams.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/h... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names
      - stephenr 6y ago
        I've shopped for paint numerous times in the last few years. I cannot even being to imagine wanting to paint my house any colour that is even vaguely similar to that of a fruit. And no, I don't know the X11 colour names, because - and brace yourself this may be shocking - not everyone uses X11.
yorwba 6y ago
> Because Asian languages have a word for orange unrelated to the fruit! In Chinese, the word remains "saffron". Maybe you're thinking of a different Asian language or a time before the introduction of oranges in China, but in modern Mandarin, the term is some variation of (橙/橘)(黄)色, the (yellow) color of (oranges/tangerines).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 6y ago
Yes. To support your point about colours being named after natural things, here's a colour chart from the 18th century. https://www.c82.net/werner/#preface https://www.c82.net/werner/#preface