What does the title mean?

I am now a few more chapters into the book and the story is beginning to make more sense, but the question still remains, why A Clockwork Orange? This very strange title seems to have nothing to do with the story or characters. What could it possibly mean? The first place I decided to begin my search of the unknown meaning was the Introduction on the first few pages of the novel. Yes, I will admit I rarely read the intros (a bad habit i know) I am just eager to begin reading that I bypass it all together. Usually, the introduction only consists of where, when, and who helped the author create this novel, but with Anthony Burgess this is not the case. Though mostly focused on the 21st chapter of the novel, the apocryphal introduction, A Clockwork Orange Resucked gives into the wonderings of the readers and explains what the author means by the title. He begins by saying "I don't think I have to remind readers what the title means"... oh, now I feel foolish. "Clockwork Oranges don't exist, except in the speech of old Londoners," he says. He gives the example of the saying, "He's as queer as a clockwork orange," which means that he is queer to the limit of queerness. By queer Burgess does not mean homosexuality, though, he is merely referring to a "queer" as odd or unconventional, as in behavior; eccentric. A clockwork orange is basically something of questionable nature, which is what the entire novel resonates upon. The Europeans translate the title to mean, "Mechanical Orange" (Arancia a Orologeria or Orange Mechanique), which is why they can not comprehend its true meaning of eccentricity/queerness; they interpret it to have something to do with a hand grenade (what Burgess calls a cheaper kind of explosive pineapple), altering their entire view of the novel. At the end of the introduction Burgess leaves us with this, "I mean it to stand for the application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness." Another quote from a Rolling Stone Article has Burgess explaining it this way, "The title of the book comes from an old London expression, which I first heard from a very old Cockney in 1945: 'He's as queer as a clockwork orange.' I liked the phrase because of its yoking of tradition and surrealism, and I determined some day to use it."

So it seems that Burgess chose this title because like the novel, it is strange. The novel centers around a fifteen-year-old boy and his friends who go around the streets robbing, raping, and causing mayhem in the futuristic city governed by a totalitarian government. Accompanied by its unique nasdat language and crazy adventures, this "novella" (as Burgess frequently calls it) seems the most appropriate piece of literature to don this title.