Why is there nothing that rhymes with orange?

Answer 1

Orange makes florange very sporange and billaborange

Happy Orange Day

Answer 2

there are several words that rhyme with 'orange'. The problem is, they were all used by the Royalists during the English Civil War. When King Charles was beheaded those words were made illegal. By the time of the Restoration of the monarchy those words were so tainted with illegality that they sank into the collective forgetfulness, and now nobody remembers them.

If you write poetry with the words of life, Mango and Tamarind rhyme with Orange (as do Tangerine and Persimmon, but not as clearly)

Answer 3

What is a rhyme? A word or lines of verse that have a sound of some part, esp. the end (but not necessarily), of words or lines of verse, right? So, a word that has similar beginnings, sounds, or that have similarities in consonants can be "imperfect" rhyming words.

So, that means that orange can effectively rhyme with: orand, aurand, oren, orren, orens, orangeade, orangeman, orangewood, orangelike, range, runge, ranger, rangy, and rearrange.

Hey! I heard the Smarty (*&$( Pants comment from the Peanut Gallery!!!:P

Answer 4

A half rhyme would be
Oh Ange your hair is so orange

Answer 5

Maybe 'not having a rhyme' is not quite so uncommon as you've been led to believe?


I assume you are speaking of PERFECT rhyme, since by allowing a few sounds that don't quite match you can find a "near rhyme" for virtually ANY English word, including "orange". (The two best examples, besides the dialectal pronunciation "door 'inge", are probably "porridge" and "storage".)

For that matter, since some near rhymes are close, others more distant, if you use "near rhymes", there is no magic point at which you can draw the line and say the word doesn't have ANY rhymes.

So the following is based on perfect rhyme, that is:

"Rhyme in which the final accented vowel and all succeeding consonants or syllables are identical, while the preceding consonants are different, for example, great, late; rider, beside her; dutiful, beautiful."
http://www.bartleby.com/61/83/P0188300.html

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NOTE how this definition affects finding rhymes -- if the accent is on the last syllable, there are very FEW sounds to match. Thus it is not surprising that only a tiny handful of words accented on the final syllable lack such a rhyme.

Here then are the only one-syllable words I can find that have no perfect rhymes (though you may include "orange" for those who pronounce it as "ornj"). This list may not be complete, but it should be close:

kiln (if the n is pronounced)
month
oink
pint
valve

Observe that all of these words have a consonant cluster at the end. Consonant clusters are, not surprisingly, a bit harder to match than single consonants. And it just happens that the particular consonant clusters combined with these particular vowels are unique. (This is less surprising for "kiln" and "valve", since L in this position in English is harder to pronounce and so usually has become SILENT -- cf. salve, halve.)

"Orange" --if reduced to one syllable-- ends up with a THREE-consonant cluster, which you might reasonably expect to be harder to match.

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But if we treat "orange" as a TWO-syllable word with the accent on the first syllable, it's not so unusual at all.

Remember, given the definition of perfect rhyme above, the further the accent is on the final syllable the MORE sounds must match exactly. Though people may not notice it, there are, not surprisingly, MANY of these kinds of words that have no perfect rhyme.


One other point it might help to consider:
The word "orange" is borrowed -- the name of a fruit not native to England. Since it is not from either of the major root languages of Modern English (Latin, much via French; Germanic Old English), it doesn't have a lot of relatives that might be expected to end the same way.

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BONUS:

To underline my point about how common it is for an English word to have no perfect rhymes, here is my tiny start on a list of (200+) non-rhyming two-syllable words with the accent on the first syllable.


absence, absent, accent, access, actress, advent, ancient, android,angry, anklet, aphid, arid, aspect, aspen, aspirin, astral, auction, auger, auspice, autumn, avid, awesome, awkward, axle
badger, bankrupt, basic, bastard, bottom, brackish, braless, brutish,budget, bugler, bungler, butcher
campus, capsule, carbine, carpal, cashless, childish, children, chimney, chintzy, comfort, compass, concert, conference, conga, convent, cordless, coporate, country, courage, cowboy, crimson, cruelty, cudgel, culprit
damsel, decal, different, difference, digest, dirndl, dolphin, drainage, drainboard, dreadnought, ducal
earthy, empress, empty, entrance, envy, equine, errand, ethics, exit, export, extra
fascist, faucet, featured, filming, fiscal, fitful, fixate, flimsy, foible, foppish, fortune, freshness, fruitful, furor
gadget, gangster, gargle, globule, grommet
happen, hapless, harness, harshness, harvest, headache, hermit,hopeless, hospice, hubris, hungry
igloo, import, infant, influx, inkpot, inlet, input, instance, instant,insult, irksome
jackass, jaundice, justice
larva, leprous, limit, limpid, listener, lively, livestock, luckless, luggage, luscious, lustrous
market, matchless, medic, merchant, message, milner, mistress, monster, morphine, music
nephron, nimbus, nonsense, nordic
oafish, object, office, offspring, olive, opera, orange, orbit,orchid, osprey, ostrich, oval
patience, peerage, perfect, perfume, pervert, picnic, piston, pixel, pizza, plankton, poison, postage, posture, potent, portent, pressure, program, promise, pueblo, publish, pungent, punish, purchase, putrid
rascal, reflux, reject, research, rhythm, rodent, roughage, rubric
salve, satchel, sausage, secret, seepage, sequin, sergeant, serpent, shameful, sinful, sixty, slippage, smugness, snorkel, sofa, starchy, strychnine,subject, substance, suffrage
tangent, temptress, tipster, tonnage, tonsils, torpid, traipsing,transient, transit, treacle, tubule, tuppence
uncial, uncle, unctuous, urchin, useful, useless
vengeance, vineyard, virile, vulgar
wallet, warble, warp, wasp, wastrel, watchful, wicked, winsome, wintry, wishful, wordless

Answer 6

How the hell should I know!

Do you think the OED will accept the new word I've created - DORANGE- A word or phrase that does not rhyme with anything.

Answer 7

Well sometimes there are words where you can't find a word to rhyme with it, like purple. (shlurple!!) x x

Answer 8

because no-one has made up such a word yet.

Once a new word enters common vocabulary that rhymes with orange i'll let you know

Answer 9

The closest thing I can think of is lozenge. Write a poem about something else love.

Answer 10

i dont think anything works perfectly, but id argue that porridge rhymes with it...