In English, the colour orange is named after the appearance of the eponymous fruit. Before the late 15th Century, the colour was called yellow-red. The earliest known use of orange as a colour name in English was in 1502, in a description of an item of Margaret Tudor’s clothing. By the 17th Century, the fruit and its colour were familiar enough for ‘orange-coloured’ become ‘orange’ as an adjective.
… / What is orange? / Why, an orange,/ Just an orange!, ‘What is Pink?’, Christina Rossetti
‘It’s a major photo-philosophical question, this: can you photograph an orange in black-and-white?’ The Ongoing Moment, Geoff Dyer
