English
orange
Orange comes from Middle English orenge, from Middle French orange, from Old French orenge, short for pomme d'orenge ‘orange (fruit)’.
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400pomme d'orenge1‘orange’
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400orenge1
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600orange1
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500orenge1
- Englishearliest quotation 1986orange1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English orange
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1986, Gilles Deleuze, Cinema: The movement-image: “It is this composition which reaches a colourist perfection…”.
Lineage
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400pomme d'orengeWiktionary, English orange‘orange’
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400orengeWiktionary, English orange
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600orangeWiktionary, English orange
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500orengeWiktionary, English orange
- Englishearliest quotation 1986orangeWiktionary, English orange. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1986, Gilles Deleuze, Cinema: The movement-image: “It is this composition which reaches a colourist perfection…”
The story
Inherited from Middle English orenge, orange, from Old French pome orenge (‘fruit orange’), influenced by the place name Orange (which is from Gaulish and unrelated to the word for the fruit and colour) and by Old Occitan auranja and calqued from Old Italian melarancio, melarancia, compound of mela (‘apple’) and un'arancia (‘an orange’), from Arabic نَارَنْج (nāranj), from Early Classical Persian نَارَنْگْ (nārang), from Sanskrit नारङ्ग (nāraṅga, “orange tree”), ultimately from Dravidian. Originally borrowed as the surname (derived from the place name) in the 13th century, before the sense of the fruit was imported in the late 14th century and the colour in 1510. In the colour sense, largely displaced ġeolurēad, whence yellow-red.
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with orange, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Middle English orenge
- pog ← guava ← guayaba ← *wayaba ← orange
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Today it means
noun An evergreen tree of the genus Citrus such as Citrus sinensis which yields oranges (the fruit).
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “orange”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Old French pomme d'orenge / orange