“For centuries orange . . . was not the name of a color, in fact. Chaucer describes Chaunticleer: ‘His colour was betwixe yelow and reed.’ . . . And in “The Canon Yeoman’s Tale,” Chaucer uses the term citrinacioun, turning to citron. . . . Chaucer knew the color; he simply did not have a word for it.”
—Alexander Theroux, The Secondary Colors, 1996.
Actually it is the fox and not the Chanticleer, the famous rooster, that Chaucer describes. But still . . . Chaucer apparently knew not the color term “orange.”