Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Sporange

Sporange (pronounced spawr-inj, spuh-ange or spor-inj)

In botany & mycology, a cell or structure within any organ (most especially fungi, Ferns, mosses, and algae) in which asexual spores are produced in indefinite numbers by progressive cleavage; also called spore case.

1880: Originally verbal shorthand between scientists; borrowed from the French as if derived from and sharing meaning with the correct term sporangium (plural sporangia, sporangial the adjective); now regarded also as a colloquial term (plural sporanges).  The original Late Latin sporangium dates from 1821 and was from the Ancient Greek σπόρος (sporos) (spore) or σπορά (sporá) (seed) + γγεον (angeîon) (vessel).

A sporange (sporangium) is an enclosure in which spores are formed.  It can be composed of a single cell or can be multi-cellular and all plants, fungi, and many other lineages, form sporangia at some point in their life cycle.  Sporanges (sporangia) can produce spores by mitosis (the division of a cell nucleus in which the genome is copied and separated into two identical halves, normally followed by cell division), but in nearly all land plants and many fungi, sporangia are the site of meiosis (cell division of a diploid cell into four haploid (a cell having a single set of unpaired chromosomes cells) which develop to produce gametes (a reproductive cell (sperm in males or eggs in females), having only half of a complete set of chromosomes).

Perfect, half & fake rhymes

Like the word silver, orange has almost no perfect rhymes but the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists sporange, a rare alternative form of sporangium, as orange’s only perfect rhyme.  Sporange was a nineteenth century adoption from the French and from the medieval record, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) also discovered the rare chilver (ewe-lamb, ie a female lamb), (now an almost extinct northern English dialectal form assumed to be Middle English, from the Old English cilfor (lamb), akin to the Old High German kilbur & kilburra (ewe lamb) and related to the Old English cealf (calf)).  Chilver appears to be silver’s only perfect rhyme so both it and orange are phonetically unusual, given English contains at least six-hundred thousand words (albeit not even a fifth of which are in common use).  Both orange and silver do however enjoy half-rhymes, the Oxford Rhyming Dictionary (ORD) listing “lozenge” for orange and “salver” for silver.

A full and stressed rhyme (eg hand / stand) or even an unstressed rhyme (handing / standing) contain vowels common to both words, while a half-rhyme like orange / lozenge or silver / salver has obvious differences between the vowels in certain syllables. The technical term for a half-rhyme is pararhyme.  A variation of the pararhyme seen often in modern poetry and popular culture is the slant rhyme, a trick which works through changing the pronunciation of two words slightly, forcing the rhyme.  Some fastidious critics refuse to call this a literary device and suggest they’re just “lazy” rhymes because they’re fake; close but fake.  A true rhyme pairs “bat” with “cat” while an example of slant rhyming is "door hinge” with “orange”.

2016 Dodge Viper (8.4 litre V10) ACR with Extreme Aero Package in Dodge Yorange (PY5/KY5).

Although there’s nothing to suggest there was interest in the adding to the language's rhythmic possibilities, Chrysler in the early twenty-first century did add Dodge Yorange to the color charts for some models, the construct being y + orange to suggest a shade of orange with a hint of yellow.  The recommended pronunciation was apparently yor-inj and it was most popular on SUVs and high-performance models.  Like the other manufacturers, Chrysler had some history in the coining of fanciful names for colors dating from the psychedelic era of the late 1960s when the choices included Plum Crazy, In-Violet, Tor Red, Sub Lime, Sassy Grass, Panther Pink, Moulin Rouge, Top Banana, Lemon Twist & Citron Yella.  Although it may be an industry myth, the story told is that Plum Crazy & In-Violet (lurid shades of purple) were late additions because the killjoy board refused to sign-off on Statutory Grape.

Ali Lohan (b 1993, left) photographed with her pregnant sister (right) wearing Sandal-Malvina Fringe Tank Dress in (unattributed) Dodge Yorange (left).  The shoes are Alexandre Birmen Clarita Platforms.

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