He won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Balliol College, Oxford, beginning in 1905.
A period of ill health led him to France and Switzerland for recuperation; there, he met his future wife, Augusta Berthe Brisac, and also developed an interest in French language and literature.
[2] In 1913, Orr was appointed assistant lecturer in French at the Victoria University of Manchester.
His academic career was interrupted by service in the First World War from 1916 to 1918 when he was an officer working in intelligence.
[3] Among Orr's major works on linguistics were Words and Sounds in English and French (2 vols., 1953), Old French and Modern English Idiom (1962), and Essais d'Etymologie et de Philologie Français (1963); he also translated works from French to English, including Eustache d'Amiens' Boucher d'Abbeville (1947), Jehan Renart's Lai de l'Ombre (1948) and Jules Supervielle's Contes et Poems (1950).