March 10, 2012

Rhymes with orange; rhymes with purple

It's hard to think of exact rhymes for these two color words.

According to this very nifty webpage from the Oxford English Dictionary people, there is a word in English that rhymes with "orange": "sporange."  "Sporange" is cited as a 19th-century word for "sporangium," a plant's spore case.  This (not that funny, I'm sorry) TV clip notes as well a place called Blorenge in Wales and the surname Gorringe.

Rhyming with "purple" is a lot more productive:
  • There's "curple," which OED calls a "phonetic corruption of curper." A curper is "a leathern strap buckled to the back of the saddle and passing under the horse's tail, to prevent the saddle from slipping forwards."
  • "Chirpal," a variant spelling of the Australian aborigine language Djirbal.
  • "Hurple," a Scottish word meaning to limp or walk lamely.
  • I suggest "Ashurnasirpal," the Anglicization of the name of at least two Assyrian kings, Aššur-nāṣir-apli (in Assyrian pronounced roughly /ashoor-natsir-aplee/)
  • Finally, the OED lists a single instance of "stirpal" as the adjectival form of "stirp," or branch or scion of a family.  Bryan Garner's Dictionary of American Legal Usage suggests the correct adjective is "stirpital" and cites a number of instances.
 Can you think of any others?  I hope this helps in your next poem.

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