[quote author=Stargzer link=board=what;num=1041441119;start=0#12 date=01/04/03 at 02:21:02]
Please note that the Orangemen or Orange Order is not just an Irish secret society but a militant Protestant group in Northern Ireland, many of whose members will undoubtedly share a place in Hell with the Provisional Wing of IRA, where they may continue to blast each other dom come for the rest of eternity.
We will fight them till hell freezes over, then we will fight them on the ice
[quote author=Linnet link=board=what;num=1041441119;start=15#16 date=01/05/03 at 08:37:55]
We will fight them till hell freezes over, then we will fight them on the ice
"‘Allan was my friend,’ he cried. He begged them with his fear,
But centuries of hatred have ears that cannot hear.
An eye for an eye was all that filled their minds
And another eye for another eye till everyone is blind.
There were roses, roses, there were roses.
And the tears of the people ran together.
Now I don’t know where the moral is, or how this song should end.
But I wonder just how many wars are fought between good friends.
And the men who give the orders, well, they’re not the ones who die.
It’s Scott and MacDonald and the likes of you and I.
There were roses, roses, there were roses.
And the tears of the people ran together."
I found a discussion on the Net on the term for orange in Latin. It arose from the question whether "the color orange is orange because of oranges".
From this discussion a few excerpts:
Croceus, or saffron
were close to orange. Certainly there is plenty of yellow in there along with the red.
Luteus
meaning "golden yellow, saffron-yellow, orange yellow" has a long u in the first syllable and comes from lutum (long u, again), which Lewis and Short define as "a plant used in dyeing yellow, yellow-weed, dyer’s weed, weld". They indicate this "luteus" is also used to describe the flame color of the Roman bridal veil, but can also mean "rose-colored."
Luteus
also means "muddy" when it has a short u in the first syllable and comes from lutum (short u) meaning mud.
Flammeus
Lewis and Short give a definition for "flammeus" as "flaming, flame-colored, fiery red." The Roman bridal veil was called a *flammeum*from its color. The author says this may not be exactly the color we call "orange," but is sure it is close.
This is on how the cultural context will influence the words we use for colors:
The real problem is one of perception and cultural context: we have a concept of a color "orange" that is the color of a fruit commonly eaten in our culture. Frequently, I think, we use that color as the standard of comparison and describe other things as "light orange" or "dark orange" or "reddish orange" or whatever. A flame might appear to us as "reddish
orange," for example.
When Romans saw an orange (on the rare occasions when that must have happened), how would they have described its color? If *their* standard of comparison was, say, the color of fire (a sight much more common in their culture than in ours, since we no longer need to strike a flame for light or cooking), the color might have struck them as "bright flame" or perhaps even "reddish yellow".
This is of course a roundabout way of saying that a question like "what was the classical Latin word for the color orange" is almost unanswerable outside the context of Roman culture.
I learned how slippery these color terms are when I was studying Spanish and found to my dismay that there is no one word in Spanish for "brown;" rather, there are different terms for light brown, dark brown, chestnut brown, etc. Evidently someone who grows up in a Spanish-speaking cultural mindset perceives these as distinct shades, each with its own term. To me, however, they all look like brown.
Grant’s original post also included the question, what were the Dolomites called before receiving the name of the mineral.
According to geologia.com, they were called the Lis montes pàljes (the "pale mountains") by local people, the Ladins. The new name didn’t become popular until the early 1900s.
Talking about luteous, there is also the corpus luteum, (luteous body) which is "the reddish yellow mass which fills a ruptured Graafian follicle in the mammalian ovary".
Uh oh, Ilka, I don’t know how reliable geologia.com is—
A Ladin legend has it that it was sylvan dwarves dwelling in the woods and caverns who caused those mountaintops to be lighter in colour by spinning moonbeams for weaving a bright diaphanous web around the peaks
unless Tolkien was Ladin. :D
And yes, Ilka, nice piece of work. This has all been very interesting. :)
Yes, great work, Ilka - I’m most grateful for the information about the Dolomites.
For more about colour words in different languages, I’d heartily recommend Colour: Art & Science. There’s a good discussion on the difficulty of understanding Ancient Greek colour words.
[quote author=uncronopio link=board=what;num=1041441119;start=15#20 date=01/06/03 at 05:39:31]Ilka, I am taking my hat off. Nice piece of work.
Talking about luteous, there is also the corpus luteum, (luteous body) which is "the reddish yellow mass which fills a ruptured Graafian follicle in the mammalian ovary".
You beat me to it! I knew I recognized that word and looked it up before I read your post.
corpus lu·te·um n. pl. corpora lu·te·a
A yellow, progesterone-secreting mass of cells that forms from an ovarian follicle after the release of a mature egg.
[New Latin corpus lteum : Latin corpus, body + Latin lteum, neuter of lteus, yellow.]
Note the Latin Plural. I first heard this word in an Organic Synthesis course almost a third of a century ago. Our professor told us that in trying to discern the structure of progesterone, it was found that a very small amount could be recovered from the corpus luteum of mammals. Since the pig has many more a few corpora lutea than other mammals and since pig ovaries were readily available from slaughterhouses, these were used as the first source. Later it was found out that stallion urine had an even higher concentration of progesterone. One researcher boiled down 10,000 liters of stallion urine to obtain a few milligrams (or was it micrograms?) of progesterone. I asked Dr. McGrath, "Where did they do that?" and he replied "Faaaaaaaaaaarrrr awaaaayyy!" :) The things our scientists do for us!
Ancient Hebrew seems to have had no word for orange, either the fruit or the colour. This is odd, as it is likely that the Israelites would have known of Persian oranges, and hence would have encountered both the fruit and the colour.
The modern word for that particular citrus fruit is tapuz, a contraction of tapu‘ach zahav, ‘golden apple.’ Zahav, gold, is itself strikingly similar to tsahov, yellow.
The modern word for the colour orange is katom, derived from a poetic word for gold, ketem, which may have been borrowed from from Akkadian kutimmu, goldsmith, itself derived from Sumerian kudim, of similar meaning.
The name for the bitter-tasting, sweet-smelling citrus fruit known in Hebrew as etrog and in English as citron derives from Persian turnuj, which sounds suspiciously close to words in several languages for ‘orange.’ It apparently has an English cognate, toronja, which the AHD fails to list.
he colour is named after the orange fruit. Before this was introduced to the English-speaking world, the colour was referred to (in Old English) as geoluhread, which translates into Modern English variously as yellow-red, yellowred, or yellored (all pronounced the same).
The first recorded use of orange as a colour name in English was in 1512 [1] in the court of King Henry VIII. Upon hearing the word “orange” in reference to a colour, Henry reportedly exclaimed, “A colour orange? Why, ‘tis the noblest divine gift I have witnessed. You, fine sir, are to be my successor!”
[url=http://www.frogs-sofas.com.au/]Dining Chairs[/ur
Well, you certainly resurrected an ancient thread that died in 2003.
I thank you since Orange is my favorite color, and I did not know the things you mentioned.
Welcome to the Agora, hope you stay and post interesting things like this often, or just get involved in the discussions.
Is it not possible that orange is a clipped version of “of an orange”? Many languages use the prepositional phrase to mean “like” or “of.” De madera in Spanish means wooden. Perhaps the same phenomenon occurred with orange.
The Dutch Royal House is the House of Orange, coming from William of Orange in Britain, I believe, or going there. (I’d have to research) Was this before or after Henry8?
I have a friend living in The Hague, Netherlands. I’ll try to get some info on that which may not be Wiki infiltrated.
Glad you’re just joking!
