In the first edition of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, the form orius was given a separate entry on the strength of this single attestation in a gloss to Adam of Petit Pont’s De Utensilibus. Tony Hunt’s more recent edition of that gloss retains the form and interprets it as a plural variant of TL orïuel 6,1285 (from Latin aureolus and synonymous with orïol 6,1283; cf. TLL ii 39.n26). The form would be a deviant of an adjective that is otherwise not attested in Anglo-Norman. We have chosen to interpret the ‘u’ as a misreading of ‘n’, and to range the citation under the more common adjective orin.

The substantival use, tentatively glossed as the plant ‘orpine’, is not found elsewhere. The two attestations may merely be misreadings (to be corrected to or[p]ine?), although the bright yellow flowers of the ‘orpine’ may have triggered an association with another adjective for ‘golden’, and hence the use of orin here. Alphita’s reading of the word as orme (included as a separate article in AND 1) seems entirely un-etymological, and has therefore been rejected here.

The TLL i 151 citation has been expanded from L. J. Paetow’s edition of John of Garland’s Morale scolarium (from which it merely copies the vernacular glosses, cf. TLL i 143.n107). The comma both in TLL and in Paetow’s edition is superfluous).