Stan Bowes, from Diggle, has uncovered some interesting and entertaining facts – you just couldn’t make them up.
THE WORD ‘orange’ has an interesting history. It ultimately derives from the ancient Sanskrit ‘naga ranga’, which literally means ‘fatal indigestion for elephants’!
In an ancient Malay fable an elephant discovered a then unknown tree – the orange tree – and ate so many it died.
As the name spread westwards over time, it changed to the present day ‘orange’.
Incidentally, orange is a difficult word for poets. Though it isn’t true no words rhyme with it, the only two that do aren’t very useful: Blorange, a mountain in Wales, and sporange, a very rare alternative spelling of sporangium (a botanical term for a part of a fern).
Improve your vocabulary
Gandiveese: As a verb, an old Scots word mean ‘to stare bemusedly.’ As a noun, it’s a name for a fictitious illness invented as a reason to get out of doing something.
Apophthegms
Being the boss doesn’t make you right: it only makes you the boss.
They say money talks: all it ever said to me was “Goodbye”.
If you don’t agree with me it means you haven’t been listening.
