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Color and Light · entry 32 of 52
The color orange takes its name from the fruit, which had the word first.
The longer version
The fruit reached Europe first and brought its name with it, travelling through several languages before arriving in English. Before that, English speakers described the hue as a reddish yellow, using a compound term rather than a single dedicated word, so the modern label is comparatively young.
The color term appears in English only from the early sixteenth century, centuries after the word for the fruit. English is unusual in having a basic color word derived from an object; most color vocabulary is older than the words for fruits. The same shift happened in several European languages at roughly the same time.
Where this entry sits
These facts explore how light behaves and how human eyes turn it into the colors we see. Along the way you meet rainbows, prisms, mirrors, shadows, lasers, and optical tricks that fool our vision every day. The full list sits on the Color and Light page, where every entry is listed in order.
More From Color and Light
Eight more entriesPurple and violet describe similar hues, though violet refers to a single wavelength of light.
Read 34Many languages have fewer basic color words than English, sometimes grouping blue and green together.
Read 35Turquoise sits between blue and green on the spectrum and is named after a gemstone.
Read 36Gold and silver describe metallic surface appearances rather than one particular wavelength of light.
Read 37The color of a flame changes with temperature, shifting from red toward blue as it gets hotter.
Read 38Optical illusions trick the brain by exploiting the shortcuts it uses to interpret light and edges.
Read 39Afterimages appear when staring at a bright color fatigues the cone cells responding to that hue.
Read 40A gray square looks lighter on a black background than the same square on a white one.
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