Today's question:

Which came first - the citrus orange or the color orange?

According to Oxford's Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "orange" came to the English language sometime around 1300. It arrived via Old French, Italian, Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit - a long journey.

All of those uses referred to the plant, the orange tree, which probably originated in northern India and eventually spread to Europe.

The orange was introduced to the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus and to North America by Ponce de Leon in 1513.

I don't know when it came to Arizona.

Anyway, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "orange" wasn't used as a color until around 1542.



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Now, one day last week there was a discussion about whether a birdbath might be a breeding ground for mosquitoes. And I offered up a few suggestions, including putting a pesticide in the water.

Since then many of you have suggested I am a dummy in favor of poisoning birds.

OK, I will not argue the dummy thing, but I hope you don't think I want to poison birds.

I should have been more precise in my choice of words.

What you want to get at your hardware store is a mosquito "bomb" or a mosquito "dunk," containing something called BTI (too complicated to spell out) that will kill mosquito larvae but won't hurt anything else, especially birds.

You guys didn't really think I wanted to poison birds, did you?

My older, but not always wiser, brother says you should not tip on the tax that is included with your bill. He says that you should base your tip on the service you received and not the tax that has nothing to do with the service. Most tips are for simply service - car valets, hair salons, etc. Is he right?

Tell your brother not to be so cheap. We're all in this together, and a nice tip, assuming it is deserved, won't kill him.

Reach Thompson at clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8612.