Rhymes with "orange"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon May 1 16:03:21 UTC 2006


At 11:36 AM -0400 5/1/06, Baker, John wrote:
>         For orange, at least, there's a classic nursery rhyme:
>
>What is the rhyme for porringer?
>What is the rhyme for porringer?
>The king he had a daughter fair
>And gave the Prince of Orange her.
>
>         It doesn't sound right to me to rhyme a word with itself, even
>if it's preceded with a prefix, such as quicksilver.  Silver, however,
>does have a rhyme:  chilver, a provincial English term meaning a
>ewe-lamb or one-year-old ewe, or ewe mutton (according to the Century
>Dictionary).
>
>         In addition to orange and silver, purple is a third color that
>is traditionally considered unrhymable, but Louis Sachar came up with
>this clever rhyme in Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger:
>
>The baby won't stop crying.
>His face is turning purple.
>Will anything make him feel better?
>I bet a burp'll.
>
There seem to be a number of cites for "sherpal" (essentially 'of or
pertaining to Sherpas', as in references to ____ trekking) and there
are 226K raw g-hits for "murple", some referring to the eponymous
band.  But "burp'll"'s cute.

L

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