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?
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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: en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/…– Mari-Lou ACommented Sep 8, 2018 at 19:55
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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 BechmannCommented Sep 8, 2018 at 20:01
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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 ACommented Sep 8, 2018 at 20:02
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3Related: english.stackexchange.com/q/282/2085– tchrist ♦Commented Sep 8, 2018 at 21:32
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1Why not 'lozenge'?– Michael HarveyCommented Sep 8, 2018 at 23:32
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1 Answer
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."
