 Chapter 4 Part 1 of the English Language by Logan Pearsle-Smith This is a livery box. Recording is in the public domain. Word Making in English It is not merely by borrowing from abroad or by discriminations between already existing words that our vocabulary has increased. New words can easily be created in English and a being created almost every day. And a large part of our speech is made up of terms we have formed for ourselves out of old and familiar material. One of the simplest ways of forming a new word is that of making compounds. The joining together of two or more separate terms to make a third. This method of making words was very commonly employed in Greek but was rare in classical Latin as it is rare in French. In German it is extremely common where almost any words can be joined together and compounds are formed often of enormous length. In the facility of forming compounds English stands between the French and German. The richness of old English in this respect has been modified by French and Latin influence. And here as in vocabulary English is partly Teutonic and partly French. The most common of our English compounds are those in which two nouns are joined together. The second expressing a general meaning which is somehow modified or limited by the first. Thus to take modern instances a railway is a way formed by rails. A steamboat is a boat propelled by steam. A school board is a board which controls schools. A board school is one of the schools managed by that board. Words compounded in this way preserve for a while the sense of their separate existence. Soon however they come to be spelled with a hyphen like lawn, a hyphen tennis or motor, a hyphen car. And before long they are joined into one word like rainfall or goldfield. And sometimes we cease to think of them as compounds at all. The form of one or other of the words is forgotten and transformed as day's eye has become daisy and Christ's mass Christmas. But compounds can be formed by joining together almost any parts of speech and sometimes more than two words are combined in a compound as in the old hop or my thumb. And in the 19th century rough and ready, hard and fast daddy long legs. We have also in English a curious kind of compound verb where an adverb is used with the verb without actual union as to give up, to break out etc. In this kind of formation the 19th century was especially rich and gave birth to many such modern expressions as to boil down, to go under, to hang on, to back down, to own up, to take over, to run across. Verbs of this kind though often colloquial add an idiomatic power to the language and enabled it to express many fine distinctions of thought and meaning. On the whole however the formation of new compounds is not of enormous importance to modern English and the language has certainly lost some of its original power in this respect. Compounds more of a tend to die out more quickly than other words. The genius of the language seems to prefer a simple term for a simple notion and a word made up of two others each of which vividly suggests a separate idea is apt to seem awkward to us unless we can conveniently forget the original meanings. Word composition really belongs to an earlier stage of language where the object of speech was to appeal to the imagination and feelings rather than to the intellect. And we find perhaps the most vivid and idiomatic of English compounds in words of abuse and contempt like licked spittle, skinflint, swillpot, spitfire. The excitement of passion heats more readily than anything else the crucible of language in which it is fused, ready for coining, the material for new words. And the abusive epithets of a language are always among its most picturesque and most imaginative words. For the poets also who like the recuperators make their appeal to feeling and imagination this method of making words is most valuable. Being allowed great freedom in this respect they have by their beautiful and audacious compounds added some of the most exquisite and expressive phrases to the English language. Chaucer and the earlier poets hardly employed this method of coining epithets but with the influence of the classical Renaissance and the translations from Homer and the Greek poets whose works are so rich in compound epithets this method of expression was largely adopted and has added to the language many compound adjectives which are little poems in themselves. Shakespeare's young eyed caribam for instance or Milton's grey hooded even or coral-pavened flaw. The commonest way of making new words is by what is called derivation. We are all familiar with this method by which a prefix or suffix is added to an already existing word as coolness is formed by adding the suffix nest to cool or in distrust dis is prefixed to trust. Many of these affixes we know to have been originally separate words as d-o-m in freedom kingdom etc represents the Anglo-Saxon dom, statute, jurisdiction and hood in childhood priesthood etc is derived from the Anglo-Saxon had meaning person, quality or rank. Our affixes however are no longer words by themselves but carriers of general ideas which we add to words to modify their meaning. Thus if we take the old English word cloud we find a verb formed from it to be cloud. Adjectives in cloudy, clouding, clouded an adverb in cloudly, a substantive in clouding an abstract noun in cloudiness and a diminutive in cloudlet or if a word like critic is borrowed and finds a soil favourable to its development it soon puts forth various parts of speech an adjective critical an adverb critically, substantive abstract and concrete in criticalness and criticism and a verb in criticise which in its turn begets a noun an adjective in criticising and another agent noun in criticiser. A full list of the affixes in English shall be found in any book of English philology or grammar with the history and the rules as far as there are definite rules for their correct usage. They can be divided into two classes those of native and those of foreign origin. The most ancient of our derivative words the small handful from the rich Anglo-Saxon vocabulary which has survived are all of course formed from native affixes and many of these affixes, nes, less, full, l, y, y etc are still in living use. But when in the 13th century a large number of French words were borrowed a great many of these brought with them their derivatives formed on French or Latin models and as Mr Bradley says when such pairs of words as derive and derivation esteem and estimation, lord and lodation condemn and condemnation have found their way into the English vocabulary its natural, the suffix asian should be recognised by English speeches as an allowable means of forming nouns of action out of verbs. In this way a large part of the French machinery of derivation has been naturalised in English. We freely form other nouns in A, G, E, Porteridge etc. in M, E, N, T Acknowledgement, amassment, atonement in E, R, Y Bakery, Brewery etc. We form adjectives too in A-L, O-U-S, O-S-C, E-S-C A-R-Y, A-B-L-E etc. Verbs in F-Y, A-T-E, I-S-C and A-S-H These French suffixes are for the most part derived from the Latin A-R-D however in coward etc. and E-S, Q-U-E and picturesque came to French from a German source A-D-E in R-K, Debalastrade Crusade is from the Spanish or Italian while I-S-M, I-Z-E, I-C and the feminine suffix E-S are ultimately derived through Latin from the Greek It is often maintained by the purists of language that these borrowed affixes should only be used for foreign words that for our own native words only our native machinery should be employed Letters continually appear in the newspapers denouncing this or that new formation as a hybrid and begging all respectable people to help in casting it out from the language There is no doubt a certain truth in the point of view and the linguistic sense of all of us will be rightly shocked by such an adjective as fichier or fichus for fishy or such a noun as damp meant the dampness but a little examination of the linguistic usage will show that no such rule can be absolutely enforced Latin borrowed Greek affixes, French borrowed them from German and freely used them in forming new French words Many of our noblest old English words as atonement, amazement, forbearance, fulfilment, goddess, etc. are formed by adding foreign suffixes to English words But English suffixes have been freely added to foreign words as in F-U-L, beautiful, grateful, graceful And when we wish to form a noun out of a French or Latin adjective ending in O-U-S we generally employ our native N-E-S for the purpose as in consciousness, covetousness, etc. The foreign prefix R-E has been completely naturalised and used again and again with native words And the modern anti and pro are added to English words with little consideration of their foreign birth And one of our suffixes, I-C-A-L, is itself a hybrid combined out of Greek and Latin elements The established usage of the language stated in general terms seems to be that foreign affixes that have no equivalent in English are often thoroughly naturalised and used with English words And that this too sometimes happens when the foreign affix is simpler and more convenient than our native one as the Latin R-E has replaced the old again which we find in the old verb to again by and other similar words When also borrowed words have become thoroughly naturalised and popular and they're then treated as if they were natives Cream, for instance, comes to us ultimately from the Greek But it's been so long at home and seems so like an old English word that would be insufferable pedantry to form an adjective like creamic from it So the correct, uncertain, ungrateful, illimited have been replaced by the hybrid's uncertain, ungrateful, unlimited and schemer has taken the place of the older and more correct, schemist On the other hand, where words are obviously foreign in character we can note a tendency which has been at work for the last two or three centuries to prefer what is called linguistic harmony to choose among two competing forms, the one which is homogeneous throughout Thus, with Cliff's words unsatiable, unglorious, undiscreet the native one has been replaced by the Latin in Unpossible is used in the Bible of 1611 but has been changed to impossible in later editions While old hybrids like frailness, gayness, scepticalness, cruelness have given way to the more correct and generally more modern forms frailty, gaiety, scepticism, cruelty This change has been rightly acclaimed as an instance of the unconscious exercise of a linguistic instinct by the English people It has not been brought about by the efforts of learned men but by the choice of the people at large and it's one of the manifestations of the genius of the language which, in its capricious way, dislikes at times the incongruity in words composed of diverse elements This tendency with the modern and more diffused study of language has grown stronger in the 19th century and with the exception of thoroughly naturalised affixes like AL, ISD, ISM, IST etc New hybrids, unless very convenient and expressive find it hard to withstand the hostile and often furious abuse and opposition which awaits them Since however such words are bound in languages like late Latin and French, on which so much of English is modelled and since many of our most beautiful old words are hybrids and there was indeed no objection to them in the greatest periods of English and our great poets and writers like Shakespeare and Milton have freely coined them It is possible that a wider knowledge of the history of the language will modify this feeling and never in the future be judged not by abstract principles but each one on its merits Another curious thing about these affixes due to the inscrutable working of the genius of the language is the way in which some of them live and remain productive while others, for some mysterious reason fall into disuse and perish TH, for instance, which was so freely employed to form nouns as in health, wealth etc is no longer employed though growth was formed as late as the time of Shakespeare and Horace Walpole's Greenth or Ruskin's Ilth could never have had the least chance of acceptance So to the prefix FOR corresponding to the still act of German FAIR the ER which we find in so many old words like forbid, forgo, forgive, forlorn is now in spite of its great usefulness quite obsolete and if we take many of our oldest suffixes such as DOM, SHIP, SUM etc we shall find as we approach more modern times that they are more and more falling into disuse Old words can be and often are revived but when an affix perishes it seems as if no effort can restore it to its old life which then of these instruments of verbal machinery are still living A collection of the most important 19th century coinages will show that out of our great wealth of native suffixes but a few are still active and almost all our good old prefixes have fallen out of use Y is still of course used as in such modern words as plucky, prosy we still form adverbs with L-Y as brilliantly, enjoyably and adjectives in less or full or ish or ing as companionless and tactful and amateurish exciting appalling etc the most living of all our native suffixes is the old NES for abstract nouns boastfulness, blandness, absent-mindedness are all 19th century words and NES has also been freely added to words of Latin origin as astuteness, saintliness this suffix has almost entirely taken the place of ship as gladness for gladship, cleanness for clean ship and ship which is given such beautiful words in the past as rent ship, worship, fellowship is almost dead now chairman ship being perhaps the only current word formed from it in the 19th century NES has also replaced head or hood in many words and also D-O-M for the 19th century attempts to revive DOM as in Carlisle's Dunstam, Dubdom have not with the exception of boredom met with any permanent or popular success the Latin suffixes in English show much more vitality probably the most common of them in 19th century formations is the use of the suffix A-L for forming adjectives or nouns preferential, exceptional, medieval with many others 19th century words phenomenal is the hybrid of Greek and Latin and the nouns betrothal and betrayal are compounds of Latin and English other adjectives that freely form with O-U-S as malaria's hilarious flirtatious with I-B-E as competitive introspective less frequently with A-R-Y as documentary rudimentary A-S-I-N-A-T-I-O-N and M-E-N-T are the commonest Latin suffixes for forming nouns as centralization, mystification, enactment of bewilderment and there are many new nouns ending in ability as conceivability, reliability etc the Latin prefix R-E is employed more than ever multi which was not common until the middle of the 17th century is much used now counter is also living, intra has become popular pre and non-namma choose and quite recently pro as a prefix has sprung into sudden popularity before pro-russian etc there is no precedent or analogy in Latin for this use of pro meaning in favour of it seems to have arisen from the phrase pro and con we find it first in pro-slavery about 1825 but it was rare until about 1896 since then however it has abounded in the newspapers used for the antithesis to the popular anti the French A-G-E as in breakage, cleavage, acreage and E-S-Q-U-E derived through French from the Teutonic I-S-H and used in such words as dantesque, reminisce are still living but by far the most active of our affixes are Greek in origin the suffixes I-C-I-S-M I-S-T I-S-T-I-C and I-Z-E and C-R-A-T and C-R-A-C-Y are fairly modern additions to the language and obviously suited to the 19th century with its development of abstract thought and its gigantic growth of theories creeds doctrine systems with them also to differentiate more nicely between various shades of thought we find principally in the 19th century a great use is also made of Greek prefixes like hyper, pseudo, archi, neo besides a great number of prefixes used in more strictly scientific terms like dia, meta, proto, etc of all these, ism is the most productive it came to us through the French who had adopted it from the Latin and as early as 1300 a few words from the French like baptism made their appearance in English by the 16th century ism became a living element in our language and since then it has rapidly grown in popularity until in the 19th century more words were formed from it than from any other affix and practically all the old English suffixes once used in its place have with the exception of any double s been swallowed up and superseded by it it is now used not only in modern words of Greek origin like hypnotism and still were in Latin words like pauperism, conservatism, commercialism but also for words from other sources as feudalism, Brahmanism, etc it is also true of agent nouns in IST as in the 19th century, scientist opportunist, collectivist of adjectives in IC byronic, idyllic, etc and of verbs in ICD as minimise, badlerise and many others the 17th century gave us one or two instances of curious hybrid verbs formed with the Latin prefix DE ICD as decanonise de-cardinalise but since the period of the French Revolution gave birth to the verb demoralise words of this formation have become extremely popular in French and English and our modern vocabulary abounds in verbs like decrystianise, decentralise, deodorise de-magnetise, etc end of chapter 4 part 1 chapter 4 part 2 of the English language by Logan Piersil Smith this LibriVox recording is in the public domain word making in English continued this short account of the decay of our English methods of word formation and the invasion of foreign affixes which seem like the foreign weeds in English rivers to be checking our native growths can hardly be very cheerful reading for a lover of the old English language and he cannot but regret the disappearance of many of those vivid syllables to which we are in the past so many of our most expressive words but as elsewhere in modern language where reason and imagination are at war imagination must give way to the claims of the intellect modern language is for purposes of use not beauty and these abstract terms inism, ist and eyes dull and dreary and impossible for his purposes as the poet finds them are indispensable for the hard thinking of science and of social and political theory there are other ways of forming new words by addition but by taking away one or more of the syllables or letters of which they are composed one of these processes is by what is called back formations sometimes a word has a false appearance of ending with a well known suffix and to those ignorant of its character seems to imply the existence of an original word from which it has been formed thus the old adverb darkling seems like an adjective formed on a supposed verb to darkle and from this supposition such a verb arose hushed, h-u-s-h-t which was originally an exclamation like wist seemed to imply and therefore gave rise to a verb to hush and the old singular's p's, sherry's, skates being regarded as plurals have begotten new singulars in p, cherry and skate. We are all familiar with the process called shortening by which words much used in conversation and hurried speech are clipped to one or more of these syllables though we are probably not all of us aware of how much the English vocabulary has been enriched in this way but to the process which has given us in recent times such words as cab, photo, cycle, bus we owe the older words size from a size sport from dis-sport and the dignified consoles from consolidated annuities has lost almost all traces of the mutilation which it has so recently undergone names of places are also a fruitful source of new words for the genius of the language when it has a gap in its vocabulary to fill is apt to seize on any material ready to its hand Worcestered is from Worcestered, a village near Norwich and canter is of course an abbreviation of canterbury and also have sometimes the good or bad luck to add their names to the language Todry is from the Anglo-Saxon Saint Todry who was famous for her splendid attire the names of an English earl and a Scotch murderer are preserved in sandwich and the verb to book and the English word which in recent times is most widely adopted into other languages is from the patronymic of an Irish landlord captain Boycott from fictitious characters come quixotic dry as dust, the verbs to hector and to panda while pamphlet is from the name of a character in a 12th century comedy but many of our commonest and most familiar terms cannot be explained by any of the above methods and have as far as is known no etymology in the true sense of the word this history of all living languages shows the continual appearance of new terms which cannot be traced to any familiar root or previously existing formation among words of this kind which appear in the Anglo-Saxon period are dog and curse are as common words as girl and boy lad and lass, pig and fog and cut appear in the 13th and 14th centuries bet and jump and dodge are not found before the 16th century while the 18th century saw the appearance of capsized donkey bore b-o-r-e and many others none of these words can be traced within his certainty to words of previous formation in the 19th century roller-king and the verb to loaf have appeared in England while rowdy, bogus, boom and blizzard are of equally obscure American formation the same process has been going on in foreign languages and many of our words of this class are borrowed from abroad risk and brave and bronze seem to be of Italian origin while flute, frown and gorgeous and the 19th century rococo have apparently arisen on French soil these new words were a considerable difficulty to the old ophthalologists who believed that all new words were descended from ancient roots formed in times beyond the king of history when our ancestors possessed the root creating faculty a pure productive energy which the descendants believed had long since lost it is one of the discoveries however of more recent philology that this faculty is by no means lost that wherever language finds itself in its natural state new words appear words which have all the character of fresh created roots which soon take their place side by side with terms of long descent and are used like them for the formation of derivatives and compounds although further research may discover the origin of some of these obscure words as they are called there can be no doubt that most of them are new creations fresh minted in the popular imagination the simplest of these new words are created by a process called by the awkward name of onomatopoeia which means literally name making but is used to describe the process by which a word is made imitating in its sound the thing which it is intended to describe this imitation of natural sounds by human speech can never be an absolute imitation though some of the cries of birds and animals have almost the character of articulate speech and in words like cuckoo and meow we do approach something like perfect representation this means a word making is illustrated by the old story of the foreigner in China who sitting down to a cupboard dish inquired quack quack and was promptly answered oh wow from his Chinese attendant but direct imitations of this kind are rare and for the most part the sounds of nature have to be translated into articulate sounds which do not imitate them but which suggest them to the mind thus the noise of splashing water has been represented by such diverse sounds as bilbit and glutt glutt the nightingale sung by bull bull jug jug and twit twit and the noise of a gun going off which we now describe by bang was originally rendered by the word bounce this symbolism of sounds the suggestive power of various combinations of vowels and consonants has never been very carefully studied but certain associations or suggestions may be briefly stated it is obvious for instance that long vowels suggest a slower movement than the shorter vowels and that vowels which we pronounce by opening the mouth convey the idea of more massive objects while those which are formed by nearly closing the lips suggest more slight movements than those slender objects thus dong is deeper in sounds than ding, clank, then clink and chip is a slighter action than that described by chop more subtle are the suggestions provided by consonants thus for some reason there are a number of words beginning with who you which express the idea of shaking or trembling the combination BL suggests impetus and generally the use of breath as blow, blast, blab, blubber FL impetus with some kind of clumsy movement as flounder, flop, flump from the combination GR we get words like grumble which express something of the same meaning as grown, grunt, grunch, grudge and the modern word of military origin to grouse from SCR we get a number of words expressing the sense of loud outcries scream, screech, screech, skrike a stop consonant like K or P at the end of words suggests the sound or movement abruptly stopped as clip, whip, snip, clap, wrap slap, snap, flap while SH in the same place describes a sound or action that does not end abruptly but is broken down into a mingled mass of smashing or rustling sounds as in dash, splash, smash, etc the comparison of smack and smash, clap and clash will show this difference words ending in MP like bump, dump, slump, thump convey the sense of a duller and heavier sound stopped in silence but more slowly this suggestive power is due partly to direct imitation of natural sounds but more to the movements of the vocal organs and their analogy with the movements we wish to describe as an explosive sound describes an explosive movement as in blast or blow but a sound suddenly stopped suggests a stopped movement and a prolonged sound a movement which is prolonged also but probably these analogies are mainly formed by association a common word established in the language describes a sound or action and its sound comes to be connected with the thing that it describes other words are formed on its model and finally the expressive power of the sound suggesting as it does so many other words of similar meaning becomes a part of the unconscious inheritance of those who use the same form of speech among the older onomatopoeias in English may be mentioned in addition to those already quoted and chatted the 18th century gave us fuss and flimsy and pom-pom a word which arose in the South African war is one of the latest additions to the list it is very rare indeed that a word is deliberately and consciously made out of sounds arbitrarily chosen but this has sometimes been successfully accomplished as in Spencer's word blatant and in gas which was formed by a Dutch chemist in the 17th century Lordenham was perhaps an arbitrary term made by Paracelsus and Ogre is found without known antecedents in the writings of one of the earliest of French fairy tale writers manufacturers and inventors of sometimes as we all know too well adopted this method of naming their wares and we owe at least one useful word formed by this process the word Kodak which has been borrowed from English into several foreign languages a still more curious class of new words are those in which two or more terms are combined or is it word telescoped into one this is an old process in language and verbs like to don, do on or to doff, do off are examples of it in its simplest form other words supposed to be informed by this process are flurry from flaw and hurry lunch from lump and hunch while flaunt is perhaps combined out of fly, flut and vaunt Lewis Carroll amused himself by creating words of this kind and thus added at least two words to the English language Chotl probably formed by suggestions of chuckle and snort and galump that of gallop and triumphant in a large number of our new words however it is difficult to define the definite associations or analyse the elements that give them their expressive meaning they seem to be creations of the most vital faculty and language the sense of its inherent and natural fitness of the name with the thing the old words bluff, queer and lounge are examples of this process which in the 18th century gave us cantankerous and humbug and several other similar words sometimes the word possesses a vague undefined expressiveness which seems capable of embodying various meanings and words of this kind have been employed for different purposes before their final use is settled thus conundrum which probably originated in Oxford or Cambridge as a piece of jocular dog Latin was first the appellation of an odd person then used by Ben Johnson for a whim then for a pun and finally settled down to its present meaning at the end of the 18th century the old word roly poly has acquired in the course of its history the following meanings a rascal a game, a dance, a pudding and finally a plump infant the expressive word blizzard seems to have floated about the United States in the vague sense of a poser until the great winter storm of 1880 claimed it as its own when Dr Johnson in his dictionary came to recent words of racy character and popular origin like coax and fun he labelled them low words and we have inherited from him a somewhat fastidious and scornful feeling about them and yet a little study of the history of literature will show us that the most admired of the past took a very different attitude towards popular creations of this kind and the words like rowdy, bogus, boom and rollicking at which we boggle would have had no terrors for the greatest of our old poets Spencer and Shakespeare for instance adopted at once the then recent and probably Irish expression hubbub the onomatopoeic bump and the dialect dwindle make their first appearance in Shakespeare's plays and he often uses the word hurry which say for one doubtful instance was not known before his time other words of a similar character bang and bluster, flare and freak huddle and bustle were all apparently the 16th century origin and all appear in the writings of Spencer, Shakespeare or Milton the first known instance of Jibber is in Horatia's lines the sheeted dead did squeak and Jibber in the Roman streets and Hamlet, when he thought of killing his uncle was not too fastidious to say now I might do it pat now he is praying the true function of the poet is not to oppose the forces that make for life and vividness in language but to sift the new expressions as they arise and ennoble in Shakespeare's fashion those that are worthy of it by his usage End of section 7 Chapter 5 of the English language by Logan Piersall-Smith this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Makers of English words every time a new word is added to the language either by borrowing, composition or derivation it is due of course to the action, conscious or unconscious of some one person words do not go out of the soil or fall on us from heaven they are made by individuals and will be extremely interesting if we could always find out who it was who made them but of course for the great majority of new words even those created in the present day such knowledge is unattainable they are first perhaps suggested in conversation when the speaker probably does not know he is making a new word but the fancy of the hearers is struck they spread the new expression till it becomes fashionable and if it corresponds to some real need and gives a name to some idea or sentiment unnamed or badly named before it has some slight chance of living we witness almost every day the growth of new words in popular slang and the process by which slang is created is really much the same as that which creates language and many of our respectable terms have a slang origin when however we come to learn it as opposed to popular words the case is somewhat different these for the most part make their first appearance in writing and some of them are deliberate formations whose authors have left on record the date and occasion of their creation our words quality and moral are descended from Latin words made by Cicero to translate tomes used by Aristotle deities from a creation of Sint Augustine centrifugal and centripetal are from latin compounds formed and first used by Sir Isaac Newton many of our more recent words are also deliberate creations Jeremy Bentham has left on record his formation of the word international agnostic and agnosticism were made by Huxley Coleridge confesses to have made the verb intensify and he also formed a new aloofness although it had been used at least once before his time Cyclone was the deliberate creation in 1848 of a meteorologist who wished for a word to describe the phenomenon of circular or whirling winds and anti-cyclone was suggested about 20 years later by Sir Francis Galton constituency was an invention of Macaulay's for which he apologised scientist was deliberately made by Huell as there was no common word to describe students of different kinds of science other 19th century words which we know to have been deliberately created are eurasian, exogamy folklore, hypnotism telegraph, telephone, photograph besides a whole host of more strictly scientific terms but most words never possessed or have soon lost their birth certificates and it would seem at first sight impossible to discover how they arose however the publication was begun at the Oxford dictionary whose army of over a thousand readers has carefully searched for many years the records of the language and has traced as far as this humanly possible each new word to its first appearance a great body of new information has been made available for the student anyone who will make from this work a collection of modern words and note their origin cannot help being struck by the fact that many of our most expressive and beautiful words are first found in the writings of certain men of genius and bear every sign of being their own creations of course we can never know for a certainty unless he distinctly states it that a writer has created the new word which is found for the first time in his writings he may have derived it from some undiscovered source or he may have heard it in conversation all we can know is that the word was introduced and became current at about the time that it makes its first appearance in his work on the other hand if we find among a number of contemporary writers in his works few or no new works are found one two or hundreds of new formations are traced if these are learned words not likely to be used in conversation if no earlier trace of them has been discovered and if moreover they are the sort of words we should expect this writer to create if they seem to bear like the coinage of a king the stamp of his personality impressed on them then surely there is at least a strong presumption in favour of the belief that he created let us for example take the instance of Sir Thomas Brown in 1646 he published that odd and interesting book The Pseudodoxia Epidemica and although his other works are not lacking in new formations this book contains them by the hundred and has probably given currency to more words in the English language than any one book since the time of Chaucer and these words are almost all just the words that we would expect him to create long many syllable words derived from the Latin and a roughen express of his own musing and meditative mind hallucination insecurity retrogression precarious incontrovertible incantatory anti-diluvian the complete list would fill a page or more of this book and will be a sufficient proof that a writer like Brown makes for himself a large part of his own vocabulary and it is a proof moreover of his genius for word making that many of these new creations words like medical literary electricity have become quite indispensable in modern speech many new words are found also in Milton's writings the greater number of them in paradise lost words like dimensionless infinitude, emblazony liturgical, ensanguant anarch, gloom irradiance, pandemonium bannered, echoing rumored, impassive moonstruck, satanic these words too bear the stamp of his coining and proclaim themselves the offspring of his genius in Shakespeare's plays partly owing to their immense popularity but quite as much to his unequaled sense for language more new words are found than in almost all the rest of the English poets put together for not only is our speech full of phrases from his plays but a very large number of our most expressive words are first found in them and in Shakespeare we find that rarest and most marvellous kind of word making when in the glow and fire of inspiration some poet to express his thought will venture on a great audacity of language and invent some undreamed of word as when Macbeth cries no this my hand will rather than multitudinous seas in carnodyne where multitudinous and incarnodyne as a verb are new words which speaks of the yoke of inauspicious stars or prosper of cloud-capped towers and the baseless fabric of this vision of the new words in Chaucer and Wickliffe we have already spoken a large number of new terms are first found in the work of their contemporaries Garand Langland and in those of Libgate and Caxton in the 15th century and in a special seems to have introduced a large number of words from standard or Parisian French the new words indeed found in these earlier authors are almost all borrowings from foreign languages and it was hardly before the 16th century that English writers began to form compounds freely but in the works and translations of Coverdale and Tyndale a number of new compounds loving-kindness, blood-guiltiness noonday morning star kind-hearted in Coverdale long-suffering broken-hearted and many others in Tyndale Scapegoat was the mistranslation of Tyndale's one of those happy eras which have added so many useful and expressive words to the English language in the revised version of 1611 we do not find many new words but the effect of this version in preserving old-fashioned terms from extinction has of course been very great with Spencer we reach the period of self-conscious care for the English language while previous writers have been content to write in the English of their time only occasionally borrowing or forming new words when they needed them Spencer deliberately formed for himself a kind of artificial language made up partly of old forms, partly of dialect expressions and partly of his own inventions we find in him for the first time a process to which the English language owes much of its present richness to a different revival of old-fashioned and obsolete words and even many of his new formations like drowsy head, eyed less dreary mint, elfin, full happy have often an archaic character like most men of letters who revive old words he frequently made mistakes about their form or meaning daring do is not a noun but a simple phrase in Torcer and Lidgate and Chevy Sans C-H-E-V-I-S-W-A-N-C-E which he used for enterprise was really a word meaning shiftiness and he employed the archaic verb height H-I-G-H-T in a number of senses very different from its true meaning with the Elizabethan writers and dramatists like Nash Green and Chapman become one yet another class of innovators whom we may call eccentric word makers these writers seem to love innovation for its own sake and to invent new words not because they're well formed or necessary but simply for the sake of novelty and oddness their works provide immense lists of words which are only used by their own creators and have never found general acceptance the 17th century abounds in writers of this kind whose poems and prose writings are full of strange formations but even these eccentrics performed a certain service to the language for by continually experimenting they would sometimes form in English or adopt from Greek or Latin a word that deserved to live thus a dramatist and fatalism are first found in Cudworth and in the enormous list of strange formations traced to Henry Moore are a number of current words like central, secuitors, decorous freakish and fortuitous even more fortunate were two secular writers of this period Evelyn and Robert Boyle Evelyn felt as he states in his diary the need for the importation of foreign words and of the large number found for the first time in his writings many were no doubt first naturalised by him they belong for the most part to the vocabulary of art or a descriptive of the ornaments of life outline, attitude, contour pastel, monochrome balustrade, cascade, opera the new words found in Boyle's writings are of course of a different character being for the most part scientific terms such as pendulum, intensity pathological, corpuscle essence in the sense of extract and fluid as a noun Dryden's works contribute many new words a large number of French phrases were imported by the restoration dramatists and with the reign of Queen Anne came a new enrichment of the language Pope's list of new words is the longest in the time of the early Georges and Dr Johnson in spite of his declaration that he had rarely used a word without the authority of a previous writer would seem if we had to judge by the Oxford Dictionary to have added a considerable number of learned words to the language among these may be mentioned irascibility and the modern meanings of words like acrimonious, literature and comic when we find words like these with the exclamation fiddle-d-d traced by the Dictionary to Dr Johnson etiquette, chrissur, picnic best-of-heeled, bored and blasé to Byron, propriety in its modern use to the eminently proper Miss Burney and idealism in its non-philosophical sense to Shelley it begins to seem as if authors had a tendency to invent or import or at least to use first imprint words descriptive of their own characteristics of other 18th century writers fielding stern and given were not word creators but Burke seems to have possessed this faculty and it is to him apparently that we are a considerable part of our political vocabulary words like colonial, colonization diplomacy, federalism, electioneering expenditure, financial prosperity and our modern use of organization, representation and resources. The rise at the end of the 18th century of the romantic movement made a demand for words not needed in the previous century this took for the most part the form of the revival of old and obsolete words like chivalrous which Dr Johnson had described in his dictionary as out of use. So Walter Scott was the greatest of these word providers and when we meet with fine old swashbucklers words like raid, foray and onslaught they're very likely to come out of his poems of the Waverly novels. Fitful which had once been used by Shakespeare in the phrase after life's fitful fever he also revived and bluff and load star gruesome he introduced from the Scot and the romantic word glamour which is derived from grammar another of his revivals and meant in the Middle Ages grammar learning, the study of Latin and thus in ignorant minds soon acquired like philosophy, magical meaning both choleridge and suddy were great experimenters in language and both almost equal the 17th century divines in their old learned and outlandish formations but among choleridge's strange words we find pessimism, phenomenal and Elizabethan and many others have become popular and current words worth in Shelley have not contributed much to our modern vocabulary but keeps who his love of unusual words showed often more enthusiasm than taste but nevertheless a genuine word maker it is true that of the many old words he revived few and none have become popular and some of his own inventions like aurorian and beemily are not happy creations but the poet who could find such expressions as winter's pale misfeature globed peonies and linen smooth and lavender must plainly have had a genius for word creation and would have done much had he lived to enrich the English language and keeps like Milton and Shakespeare possessed that rare gift of the great poet the power of creating those beautiful compound epithets which are miniature poems in themselves deep damasked for instance and due-doubled and the nightingale's full-throated ease after Keats the faculty of word creation shows a remarkable decline and with the exception of Carlisle the harvest of new words from the works of other 19th century authors is a poor and scanty one Tennyson's compound epithets like evil, starred, green, glimmering fire crowned are sometimes beautiful and we owe to him apparently Horatian, moonlit and fairy tales but Tennyson cannot be claimed as a great word creator and still less can be said for Browning whose odd formations like crumblement, publicity, darlingness, artistry garnishry can hardly be considered valuable additions to the language in Carlisle however the Victorian era possessed one great word creator one who could treat language with the audacity of the old writers and who could like them fuse his temperament into a noun or adjective and stamp it with his image croquery, gigmanity, bedlamism grombly, dandiacal would anyone but Carlisle have invented words like these he had a genius for nicknames his pig philosophy and dismal science I still remembered and his eccentricities and audacities would fill many pages but his contributions were not all of this personal character like Sylvester Scott he introduced words like art and art come into England out of Scotland and a number of current words like environment and decadent are traced to his writings when we come to living authors one searches the dictionary in vain for any serious contributions to a vocabulary from their works although about twenty new words are added to our current speech every year in countries like France or Germany authors and men of letters make at least an attempt to provide their age with expressive terms for the new experiences in England writers seem to be somewhat unduly conservative and to leave this task to others to the newspapers or to chance at the present day are only deliberate word makers in the domain of science and the popular interest in their discoveries and inventions tends to give great currency to their new formations as moreover in this age of newspapers we make the acquaintance of our new words by reading and not as of old through speech these new formations do not undergo the process of transformation and assimilation by which words were naturalised in the past but keep their clear-cut and alien forms and so tend to produce a learned scientific jargon which is not as of old gradually translated into English by popular speech but tends on the contrary to extend itself over our old English and cripple or destroy the methods of machinery of the ancient language this from the point of view of literary or idiomatic English cannot but be regarded as a misfortune although an inevitable one for which as long as the present state of things continues no remedy can be suggested there can be no doubt that science is in many ways the natural enemy of language language either literary or colloquial demands a rich store of living and vivid words words that are thought pictures and appeal to the senses and also embody our feelings about the objects they describe but science cares nothing about emotional vivid presentation her ideal is a kind of algebraic notation to be used simply as an instrument of analysis and for this she rightly prefers dry and abstract terms taken from some dead language and deprived of all life and personality however if these and other dangers seem to threaten the English language we must remember that it is passed through greater dangers and suffered from far worse misfortunes in the past it has been mutilated as hardly any other language has been mutilated but these mutilations have made place for wonderful new growths its vocabulary has been almost destroyed and better words have been found to make good these losses foreign influences French and Latin have threatened its existence but in the end it conquered its conquerors and enriched itself with their spoils and we may rest confident that as long as the English nation remains vigorous in thought and feeling it was somehow fought for itself a medium of expression worthy of itself and of the great past from which it has inherited so much End of section 8 Chapter 6 part 1 of the English language by Logan Pearsle Smith this LibriVox recording is in the public domain language and history the earliest period we have had the two treated the subject of the English language more in its formal aspect without much regard to the thought of which it is the expression and which fashions it for its instrument the last however is the most interesting and certainly the most important aspect of the subject but say for the earliest period of our race history it has not yet occupied the attention of many scholars the subject of semantics as it is called the science of meaning the development of life and thought as embodied in language is yet in its infancy and indeed until the partial completion of the Great Oxford Dictionary in which every word is traced as carefully as possible to its origin and all its changes of meaning registered in their chronological order which study could have been used for the undertaken in regard at least to the later periods of English history every sentence every collection of words we use in speech or writing contains if we examine its component parts a strange medley of words old or modern, native or foreign and drawn from many sources but each possesses its ascertainable history and many of them bear important traces of the event or movement of thought to which they owe their birth if therefore we analyse our vocabulary into its different periods separating our earliest words from the later editions we shall find the past of the English race and civilisation embodied in its vocabulary in much the same way as the history of the earth is found embodied in the success of strata of geological formation for it is not too much to say that a contradiction between language and history rarely or never occurs when a new product, a new conception a new way of feeling comes into the thought of a people it inevitably finds a name in their language a name that very generally bears on it the mark of the source from which it has been derived let us then take our modern English civilisation in a few at least of its broadest and simplest aspects and attempt by means of language to study its elements and proximate sources and the periods when they were accepted into the consciousness of the race by far the oldest deposit in the English language is a little group of words inherited from the ancient Aryan language which was spoken when our ancestors and those of the Greeks, the Romans the Slavs, the Persians and Hindus all dwelt together in some unknown place at some remote date far in the prehistoric past although the belief in a homogeneous Aryan race is now generally abandoned the evidence of language shows a continuity if not a race at least of culture and these wrecks and fragments of speech preserved by some happy accident by far the oldest documents we possess concerning our civilisation we have little or no historical knowledge of any of the Aryan peoples before about 1000 BC beyond that period to the time of the primitive Aryans there stretches a gap probably of many thousands of years which we can only cross on this frail bridge of words the earliest pioneers and the study of language followed this tracking to the unknown past with more enthusiasm than caution and created for themselves out of a few old and battered words the picture of a beautiful golden age a kind of terrestrial paradise which they located in the centre of Asia where five or six thousand years ago they believed that the ancestors of the Aryan races dwelt together in pastoral and poetic simplicity and plenty recent criticism however has destroyed much of that beautiful picture and it is not now believed that the evidence of language is sufficient to enable us to reconstruct save in the barest outline the conditions of this early culture even the Asiatic home of the Aryans is no longer generally believed in and the most widely accepted of current views is probably that which places their home in the sudden steps of Russia when sat their separation the Indian and Persian branch wandered towards the east the Slavs and Tutans into the German forests and the Greeks towards Greece while the ancestors of the Celts and Romans followed the course of the Danube towards Italy and Gaul it would be beyond our scope however to treat this whole subject of the Indo-European languages and the primitive Aryan civilization we must confine ourselves to the words existing in our English vocabulary which have been derived from that language and the evidence of the earliest known stage in the culture of our race for we find in this primitive deposit of language not only the original forms of words like knee, foot and tooth and terms for our simplest acts and perceptions but others more indicative of a definite state of civilization the numerals up to ten descend to us from this period the words father, mother, daughter sister, brother, son, widow and our old word Neve, N-E-B-E now replaced by the French nephew show that family relationships had been considerably developed Hound is an Aryan word and with goat, goose, sow and a word for horse E-O-E-O-H which has long since perished in our language have been taken as a proof that these animals have been more or less domesticated but the most important of these names of domesticated animals are connected with the flocks and herds of pastoral life and seem to show that cows and sheep were the main property and means of subsistence for this ancient people U-E-W-E-W-E-E-D-A-G-R and wool, cow, ox, steer, herd have been traced back to the early Aryans and another word fi, F-W-E-E which in old English and other teutonic tongues meant both cattle and money and which is related to the Latin peku P-E-C-U from which pecuniary descends indeed the accumulated evidence of language proves almost beyond a doubt that the Aryans were a nomadic race similar in habits to the modern Tatas driving their hodes of cattle with them on their wanderings depended for the most part on their meat and milk for food and on their skins for clothing the words wheel, nave, axle, yoke and a root from which our wane and wagon descend are regarded as a proof that wheels have been invented and that the Aryans travelled in carts drawn by cattle they persist only one word for any kind of metal our word o-o-r-e descends from it and this is taken to stand for copper which is often found in a form easily hammered into use by primitive peoples no Aryan word for sea or fish have come down to us but our verb to row and our word rudder which originally meant a paddle seemed to show that the original race had learned some primitive forms of river navigation probably in a canoe dug out from the trunk of a tree like the canoes of other primitive people door is a very ancient word timber is derived from an Aryan root and that comes from an old verb meaning to cover these words are regarded as a proof that the Aryans like their Germanic descendants in the time of Tacitus had begun to build some kind of wooden or wicker huts for themselves without however windows for which no term common to the related languages is found our word mead is found in many Aryan languages and shows that this primitive people possessed a drink made from honey the verb to weave is of equal antiquity and seems to show that some art of making cloth or at least a platting have been early acquired words showing a knowledge of agriculture are few and a doubtful meaning and form a strong contrast to the terms connected with flocks and herds and wagons the word tree the names of birch and witty are widely distributed the words wolf the hare the beaver the otter the mouse feather nest are of great antiquity and night and star dew and snow wind and thunder fire and east are primitive terms or ones that descend from early roots the greater part of the words which have come to us from this early period are of a homely and some even of a coarse character and we're not accustomed to feel any especially romantic interest in them and yet they are of importance as forming the first deposit of human experience in our race of which we have any knowledge the nucleus of life around which our present civilization has slowly grown from them we can make for ourselves a dim picture of our primitive ancestors dwelling in waddled huts or loading their goods and chattels on their wooden ox carts and driving their herds of cattle and flocks of sheep as they wandered out to seek new pasture lands and new temporary habitations but when we consider that a large part of these words are still spoken and not only almost all over Europe but in some remote languages of the east we can find in them a bond which makes if not the whole at least a great part of the world kin and joins our English civilization with those of Persia and India and when to remember the unknown antiquity of these words we come to associate them with other remains of an unknown past that we still carry with us old rites which are still practised superstitions which still haunt our minds and the antique agricultural implements the wheels and clashes and shepherd's crooks which we still see in use about us the 19th century which is added to modern life many material conveniences has also enriched it with at least one new way of feeling one new intellectual pleasure the projection of our thoughts and sympathies through thousands of years into the primitive past beyond all dates and records our modern knowledge of the antiquity of our Aryan words does much to open for us these vistas and vast avenues of time in terms like mother, father, brother, sister night and star and wind are all the more beautiful and dear to us because we know that they belong to the innermost core of our race experience and our living sounds conveyed to us by the uninterrupted speech of countless generations out of the silence and darkness that lie far beyond the dawn of history the next step in the history of our primitive civilization is one that we also learn of from the history of language after an unknown period the Asiatic group the peoples from whose speech those of the Persians and Indians that arrived split off from the original Aryans and we find the European races still dwelling together and acquiring in common terms that betoken a certain advance in civilization there is reason for believing that this European branch have made their way from treeless steps and pasture lands into a country of forests for we find that in this western or European period when the ancestors of the Greeks, the Romans the Celts and Teutons were still closely connected a number of words for trees and birds make their first appearance our words for beach, hazel, elm, sallow, throsel, starling and finch have been traced with more or less certainty to this period and we also find a number of agricultural terms are common to do more of the Western peoples corn and furrow bean and meal an ear of corn the verb to mow the old word for plowing to ear which is now obsolete save in certain English dialects although it is used in the revised version of the Bible this increase of agricultural terms is believed to be additional evidence of the migration at this time from a treeless to a wooded country for nomadic peoples despise agriculture and only the pressure of necessity will make them abandoned for their pastoral life it was probably therefore when our ancestors found themselves in the dense primeval forests of Europe with their scanty pasture lands and stagnant streams and wide marshes that they were forced to supplement the easy life of shepherds and cattle breeders by the much more laborious occupations of agriculture if we are to believe the evidence of language it was at this period too that our ancestors became acquainted with the sea for which the Asiatic and European languages had no common word our word mea which is still used in poetry and which forms the first part of the word mermaid corresponds to the Latin mare M-A-R-E from which we derive our borrowed word marine and salt and fish are terms common to the European group at what period this early group of European tribes separated from each other we have no knowledge but it was long before the earliest records of European history that our ancestors made their way into the German forests while the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans moved towards the shores of the Mediterranean there are strong linguistic grounds for believing that the ancestors of the Celts and Latins travelled for a while together and those of the Slavs and Teutons while the Greeks formed a group of their own for the Celtic language is believed to be more nearly related to Latin than Latin is to Greek and the Slav and Teutonic speakers have certain elements in common but the next important stage in the history of our race is that marked by the group of languages called Teutonic to which high and low German English, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish belong this third and Teutonic stratum of our civilization following on the Scanty, Arian and West Arian deposits is a very rich one and shows very marked advances in primitive civilization the whole subject of Teutonic life would be beyond our limits but some aspects of it are shown by the common Teutonic vocabulary may be briefly noted there is a large addition to the vocabulary not only of forest terms names of trees, birds and beasts but also that of agriculture and a great part of the words we use in farming date from this period and Breu, Broth, Need, K, N, E, A, D Doe, Loaf a words common to our Teutonic ancestors and with that comb and felt house and home are marks of an advancing civilization the word borough was still used for a fortified place but it had perhaps even in this early period come to acquire a meaning something like a town or civic community while King and Earl showed the advance of a civil organization although these words had not of course like many of the others they developed meanings we attach to them now the words by, B-U-Y, where W-A-R-E, worth and cheap which originally meant butter are evidence of the growth of trade the early vocabulary of the Teutonic tribes the sounds and sights of the sea are very apparent and to show how our ancestors in their home by the Baltic and the North Sea coasts required the arts of seamanship and that familiarity with natural phenomena which is so important to sailors the words C-S-E-A, sound and island flood, cliff and strand belong to this period and with them ship, steer, sail and stay the names of the points of the compass North, South, East and West are a common inheritance of the German languages and they possess in common two words like storm, shower and hail the name whale for any large sea beast seal and mew for the seagull and even the name for an imaginary water demon which survives in the German Nixe and in our old and half-forgotten word Nica, N-I-C-K-E-R End of Section 9 Chapter 6 Part 2 of the English Language by Logan Piersle Smith this LibriVox recording is in the public domain language and history the earliest period Part 2 the discovery of the metals is rightly regarded as a great turning point in the history of culture nothing has a greater influence on the development of civilization than the use of metals and metallic instruments the archaeologists divide the different stages of prehistoric culture according to the presence or absence of copper, bronze and iron the primitive variants possessed as we have seen but one term for metals which they used to designate copper the only metal that they knew but the Teutonic tribes before our Anglo-Saxon ancestors separated from them had acquired words for gold and silver lead, tin, iron and steel and the sinister and magical character blacksmiths and old German legends is a proof of the wonder with which the new art of forging was regarded other words that show a great advance in civilization are leech, a healer and law L-O-R-E and also book and write words which have acquired new meanings in the course of time but which date from this Teutonic period when as we know from other sources the rudiments of the art of writing have been acquired book which is thought to be derived from beach B-E-C-H originally signified a writing tablet probably a wood and write which is related to the German word reisen to tear meant to cut letters in Park or Wood if we examine the commonly accepted etymologies of others of these Teutonic words we can get some little glimpses into the ways of our far off Teutonic ancestors we note first of all a group of words that seem to have grown out of the experience of those wanderings which were so important a part of primitive life fear F-E-A-R for instance is believed to be derived from the same Aryan root as fair F-A-R-E and could therefore suggest the dangers of travel in the early forests learn has been traced to an early root meaning to follow a track and weary to a verb meaning to tramp over wet grounds and moors there are other words that take us back to bygone ways of life our verb to earn for instance is derived from an old word meaning field labour and is cognate with the German outer harvest gain although it has come to us from French is descended from a Teutonic verb meaning to graze to pasture and also to forage to hunt or fish free comes from an Aryan root meaning dear D-E-A-R when it's also our word friend and meant in old Teutonic times those who are dear to the head of the household that is connected with him by ties of kinship not slaves or in bondage our important religious word bless carries us far back into the pagan and prehistoric past bless is derived from blood and its original meaning which was to mark or consecrate with blood is evidence of the ritual use of blood which is so common among primitive peoples our word mirth has been given a curiously psychological derivation for it is traced with its related adjective merry to a word meaning short and is supposed to designate that which shortens time or cheers we must however in all these old words especially those describing thoughts and feelings beware of the anachronism of reading into them their modern meanings thus fear had the objective sense of a sudden or terrible event till after the Norman conquest the early meaning of mirth was enjoyment happiness and could be used in old English of religious joy while merry meant no more than agreeable pleasing heaven and Jerusalem were described by old poets as merry places and the word had originally no more than this signification in the phrase merry England into which we read a more modern interpretation the progress of civilization has been well compared to the course of a river having many sources some undiscovered and for historians of culture those points at which a broad tributary joins the mainstream have of course in a special interest we have now traced our ancestors from their original and unknown home to the coasts and forests of Germany where at the period at which we now arrive there was still savages in spite of their notable advances in the arts of life and still dwelt in rude huts or underground excavations or migrated as of old on their ox carts they had doubtless borrowed from neighbouring tribes many of their new arts and learnt from them the use of new products there are scholars who hold that the knowledge of iron came with its name from some Celtic race and that the word silver was derived from salub a town on the black sea mentioned in the Iliad as the original home of silver the words rat and ape are also believed to be very early borrowings but their sources have not been discovered and it is difficult or impossible to trace in the dark night of prehistoric time the influences the contacts with neighbouring peoples from which these new products and the names of these new animals were derived but we are now approaching one of the great meeting places of history when our ancestors were about to come in contact with races and fall under the spell of influences which would have transformed their life in a marvellous manner and to create out of ignorance and savagery our modern world of culture when the primitive European group of the Aryans was broken up and our Teutonic ancestors lost themselves for hundreds or thousands of years in the deep forests of Germany the related tribes from whom the Greeks and Romans were descended made their way more or less directly to the Mediterranean and on these propitious shores the birthplace of modern thought and life they came in contact with the ancient civilisation of Egypt and the East they learnt the arts of building in stone of mining and navigation they took from the East the beginnings of art of writing of mathematics and built up the wonderful litophists of classical civilisation which first led by Greece and then by Rome settled the main elements and outlines of human culture the light shines very clearly on this page of ancient history when the highest forms of thought and life were developed in the great centres of Athens and Rome and spread their luminous influence over wider and wider areas the darkness in which on the other side of the Alps our ancestors were involved seems pitchy black by comparison and it would be beyond our task to describe how little by little that darkness was partially dispelled all we can do is to trace by certain words early borrowed by the northern barbarians from the polished nations of the south some gleams of light that penetrated northward in this early period before the tribes of the Angles and Saxons invaded England these gleams are faint and uncertain and there is considerable doubt about many of our earliest borrowings taking them however for what they are we may gain little hypothetical knowledge at least concerning this early period to try more to arrange the words chronologically is also highly precarious as there is always the possibility that a word which appears in several cognate languages did not belong to the original stock before their separation but has spread from one to the other of the tribes since that date following however the opinion of the best authorities we may take the word Caesar the title of the Roman emperors probably the earliest Latin word adopted into the Teutonic speech this word however in the form in which they borrowed it has become obsolete in English and has come to us again from Latin other early terms which show some contact with the forces of Rome are of a military character Pile and camp and Drake an old word for dragon which was borrowed probably to describe the dragon banners of the Roman cohorts Drake still lives in the compound fire Drake Pile has since lost its original meaning of a heavy javelin such as the Roman soldiers carried and camp no longer signifies for us battle or field of battle she'd only survives in the name of camp ball or in the dialect phrase of Provincial Athletics to camp the bar our modern camp being a much later borrowing from the French street from Stratovia paved way and mile and wall and toll are also believed to be early borrowings showing that our ancestors were familiar with the roads times and regulations of the Roman Empire perhaps even earlier than these are cat, mule and ass and a group of words which remain as a testimony of the visits of wandering traders from the south chest and arc, ARK which meant originally a box or chest pound as a measure of weight inch and seam S-E-A-M an old word for the load of a pack horse which still survives in various technical uses Munger in iron munger or fish munger comes to us from a borrowing of mango M-A-N-G-O, a Latin name for a trader copper was perhaps taken from his copper coins and the word mint which kept the meaning of money till the 16th century was also borrowed being derived like the later money from the name of the goddess Moneta in whose temple at Rome money was coined among the names for the foreign products brought by these early traders we find wine and an old word E-L-E for oil pepper is an early borrowing it has been traced back to India and it is among the first of those ancient far travelled words that have come into the English from remote sources in the Orient words like the later ginger, silk and orange redolent of deserts and caravans far mountains and eastern seas these early words give us a dim picture of Roman traders travelling with their mules and asses along the paved roads of the German provinces their chests and boxes and wine sacks and their profitable bargains with our primitive ancestors civilization begins however not so much by the importation of foreign products which can be found in the most savage communities as by the imitation of foreign arts and technical processes we possess in English a small group of words which show that our ancestors had begun to take this step before they left the continent chalk in the sense of lime has been taken as a proof that they had learnt the art of building with mortar from the Romans and they also borrowed the word pit which seems to have meant in early times a well or spring built round with masonry table and pillow speak for themselves middle is an important borrowing and the words kitchen, kettle, dish point to a revolution in cooking arrangements cheese and perhaps butter may be regarded as words whose adoption signifies not the appearance of new objects but of new and improved methods of producing them other words that show in advance in civilization are connected with agriculture and especially with the cultivation of fruit trees apple is probably a very early borrowing but its origin is unknown although some have tasted to the town of Abela in Campania famous in antiquity for its apples better established borrowings are pear cherry and plum the two latter being ultimately derived from Greek our words imp and plant are believed to be early adoptions and to show that the art of grafting fruit trees was acquired at this time for the original meaning of both these words was that of a chute or slip used in grafting the language has preserved some Latin words proving that the culture of the vine was established at an early date in the German provinces and poppy and mint are prehistoric borrowings of the names of plants anchor seems to be the only sea term they took from Latin for as we have seen they had developed sea vocabulary of their own although before the third century of the Christian era the Rhinelands have become a centre of Roman civilisation with Roman roads, fortresses stone-built houses and marble temples the above list of words will show that the German tribes borrowed from these rich storehouses of culture only such things as their barbarian minds could appreciate not ideas but homely instruments, useful plants and methods of production but there are a few very interesting words which made their way into the language at this early date and which showed the beginning of the influence of ideas and the dawning of that great world of thought and feeling the Christian religion which was destined to absorb and transform the primitive culture of these Teutonic tribes the most important of these terms is the word church which is in itself a historical document of great interest while most of the other languages of Europe received from Latin Christianity the word ecclesia for church as we see in the French Iglise the Italian chiesa church the Anglo-Saxon Circe Circe is believed to be derived ultimately from the Greek Coriacon meaning the Lord's house a name not uncommon for sacred buildings in the provinces of Eastern Christianity this Greek word was probably learned by the German mercenaries in the Eastern provinces serving as so many served in the Roman armies or by the gods who invaded lands where Greek was spoken from the 4th century onward Christian churches with their sacred vessels and ornaments were well known objects of pillage to the German invaders of the empire and the pagan Angles and Saxons borrowed this Greek name for the churches they sacked centuries before they entered them as believers angel and less certainly devil and words of Christianity which were perhaps directly borrowed from the Greek the names of supernatural spirits pass easily from tribe to tribe and these words perhaps reached our ancestors in this way it is not for more than a thousand years that we find again any direct borrowing from Greek into English and then the words are taken from books by enlightened scholars of the Renaissance not whispered from ear to ear by superstitious barbarians the Christian church was divided at this time by the great Aryan heresy and these Greek words came to our ancestors from the heterodox East but they were also affected by a second stream of influence from the Orthodox Church of the West which reached them through the Christians of Gaul and Germany and from these before they came to England our ancestors believed or borrowed the word arms ALMS Bishop, Monk and Minster the name for a monastery or a monastic church and also the word pine from which our verb to pine descends and which being derived from the Latin poina was used in the early church to describe the pains of hell it was with these dim and vague notions in the heads that they embarked in the warlike boats to cross the sea to England End of section 10