As a child most of us are taught that nothing rhymes with orange. But now grown up I discover that there are rhymes, for example, on RhymeZone, they show that sporange and gorringe are rhymes. (I'm not sure if this is a question that is allowed to be asked on this site, if it isn't I will remove it.) But why are there rhymes now and not before? These words are only rare words but does that make them a valid rhyme or is it just that they simply don't perfectly rhyme?
Asked
Active
Viewed 283 times
0
-
5Did you ever hear of the words "sporange" and "gorringe" before? Do you know what they mean? I certainly don't. See Oxford Dictionary Blog for more: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/are-there-any-words-that-rhyme-with-orange/ – Mari-Lou A Sep 08 '18 at 19:55
-
1I'm not sure about the question. Are you asking why it has a rhyme, whether it has a rhyme or why we don't teach it in school? I'm assuming it's not the first one (its like asking why bananas exist), but its still unclear what you want answered – Vincent Bechmann Sep 08 '18 at 20:01
-
3It's not as if ten or twenty years ago the term "sporange" didn't exist, it did but normal people don't know of its existence. Why would a teacher tell his or her students about a word that nobody would ever need? If you're teaching small kids about rhymes it's easier to talk about tangible, real life things like "carrot" and "parrot". – Mari-Lou A Sep 08 '18 at 20:02
-
My mother worked at a big store in London called Gorringes in the 1960s. – Michael Harvey Sep 08 '18 at 21:21
-
3Related: https://english.stackexchange.com/q/282/2085 – tchrist Sep 08 '18 at 21:32
-
Define “valid rhyme”. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_without_rhymes – tchrist Sep 08 '18 at 21:32
-
1Why not 'lozenge'? – Michael Harvey Sep 08 '18 at 23:32
-
1There are different sorts of rhyme according to how much matches (e.g. masculine rhyme and feminine rhyme). The generally accepted minimum is one syllable. The problem is where does the syllable start? orANGE rhymes with lozENGE, but oRANGE doesn't rhyme with loZENGE. Also I don't think it is considered much of a rhyme if only an unstressed syllable matches. In The Owl and the Pussycat, boat is rhymed with note (both stressed) but money is rhymed with honey. I don't think it would be good enough if money rhymed with pinny, or, even worse, with bounty. – David Robinson Sep 08 '18 at 23:53
-
One of the main reasons for learning about rhyme is so you can be made to write poetry at school. You can't use a word in a poem if you do not know what it means so I think a true statement for children would be: "there are no words you can rhyme with orange in a poem." – David Robinson Sep 08 '18 at 23:57
-
@MichaelHarvey What follows is my interpretation from a reading of the Gospel of Wikipedia. Lozenge is only a near/slant/half rhyme, because a perfect rhyme has to have identical sounds "from the last stressed vowel to the end of the word." Orange has an R sound, lozenge has a Z sound. Also, to the OP, I understand "sporange", but what is gorringe apart from a proper noun (ie., placename/surname)? – Zebrafish Sep 09 '18 at 00:17
1 Answers
2
That very same RhymeZone website says that "gorringe" is
A surname (very rare)
and when you click on the link for "sporrange", it links to a Wikipedia article, which reads:
Although sporange, a variant of sporangium, is an eye rhyme for orange, it is not a true rhyme as its second syllable is pronounced with an unreduced vowel [-ændʒ], and often stressed.
I don't think either of those invalidates what you learned in grade school.
You said:
As a child most of us are taught that nothing rhymes with orange.
Actually, that may be what you learned, but I'm not sure that's exactly what you were taught. Sometimes we hear a teacher say something like: there are no English words that are exact rhymes with 'orange', but somehow we oversimplify that in our minds, and fail to acknowledge how that wouldn't necessarily preclude near rhymes or bent words, or proper nouns, compound words or enjambments. That same Wikipedia article lists a few examples; I'll close with one of the more ingenious ones:
The four engineers wore orange brassieres.
And yes, "more ingenious" intentionally rhymes with "orange genius."
