Day 14: Challenge Accepted: Rhymes with Orange

One of my colleagues wrote on my ideas sheet: "find a word that rhymes with orange."  That became my next quest.  I knew it had to be an actual word, not something that someone would come up with from Words with Friends, Bananagrams, or text speak, and of course it had to come from a legitimate source. Having worked in academics some, I know a little bit about decent sources. And if anyone would like to challenge the Oxford English Dictionary, they're more than welcome to do so. But I wouldn't recommend it.

This brings to mind a story told to me by a professor many about someone's challenge of the Oxford English Dictionary many many years ago.  A professor of whom you might have heard, named J. R. R. Tolkien, was teaching a class at Oxford when one of his students asked him why he used the plural of "dwarf" as "dwarves" when the Oxford English Dictionary clearly stipulated that the plural of "dwarf" was "dwarrow".  Tolkien replied that he found the word dwarves to be much easier to say by the average reader and thus decided to use it. When he had finished explaining this to the student, he added "And yes, I am familiar with the word 'dwarrow' in the Oxford English Dictionary. I wrote the entry."

No I did not write either the definition or the original entry for the one word that rhymes with orange, but I did find such a word in the Oxford English Dictionary!

Would you like to know what it is?

Are you sure?

Drum roll please...

The word that rhymes with orange is SPORANGE!

Of course that was everyone's next guess!  We all know what a sporange is!  Just in case you're like one of those many few who don't know what a sporange is, below is the definition:

"The only word in the 20-volume historical Oxford English Dictionary that rhymes with orange is sporange, a very rare alternative form of sporangium (a botanical term for a part of a fern or similar plant)."

Why doesn't that come to everyone when they ask what rhymes with orange? I'm sure the horticulture agent in our office would be able to reference that, but I can assure you that most of us, myself included, could not.  That being said, it feels awesome to have found the word in the English language that rhymes with orange.

Now to figure out how to use it...

Perhaps that's going to be my next project ;)

Now you know!

So keep Living Orange!