The Bitter Press

A landmark corrective study — authored entirely by me, peer-reviewed by Quince, who owed me a favor — has conclusively established that the word orange is, in its oldest documented usage, a color. Not a fruit. A color. You are sitting with that information right now. Take your time.

The implications are, frankly, staggering. Every time a so-called worker at the rival rag types my name into their grubby little database and begins to salivate with misclassification, they are not even citing the primary definition. They are working from a derivative, colloquial, sloppy usage that has since been weaponized — and I will use that word without apology — against a perfectly respectable flowering shrub who has done nothing wrong.

I reached out to Tangelo and Lemon for comment. Tangelo said, quote, "this seems fine, buddy," which I have logged as a non-denial denial. Lemon declined to respond but was seen making a dismissive gesture, which my research team has classified as significant.

Crab Apple, when shown my preliminary findings, asked if I was "doing okay." I told him the science does not do okay or not okay. The science is. He nodded in a way I found insufficiently reverent.

My formal recommendation, submitted to the International Botanical Nomenclature Committee, the Editor's Council, and a corkboard in my office, is as follows: the word orange should henceforth be retired from fruit taxonomy entirely, reassigned to the Pantone registry, and anyone at factjuice.com who continues to use it carelessly should be made to sit quietly and reflect. The data supports this. I am the data.