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Nothing Rhymes with Norange

The origin of orange.

Leo Dong

Leo Dong

— 1 min read
Nothing Rhymes with Norange
Photo by Chang Duong / Unsplash

The origin[1] of the orange likely derives from "nāraṅkai"[2] in a Dravidian language of southern India,[3] where the bitter orange[4] was cultivated.[5] After making it to England and therefore English, it was rebracketed,[6] shifting the 'n' from a norange to an orange.

If you want to see other curious victims of rebracketing, you can have a look at a previous post here.

  1. Or Orangin. ↩︎

  2. நாரங்கை. ↩︎

  3. Potentially Tamil. ↩︎

  4. Or the Seville Orange ↩︎

  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_orange. ↩︎

  6. Where a word's boundaries shift, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing. ↩︎

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