A History of English Language

Middle english 171
142. Latin Borrowings in Middle English.
The influence of the Norman Conquest is generally known as the Latin Influence of the
Third Period in recognition of the ultimate source of the new French words. But it is right
to include also under this designation the large number of words borrowed directly from
Latin in Middle English. These differed from the French borrowings in being less popular
and in gaining admission generally through the written language. Of course, it must not
be forgotten that Latin was a spoken language among ecclesiastics and men of learning,
and a certain number of Latin words could well have passed directly into spoken English.
Their number, however, is small in comparison with those that we can observe entering
by way of literature. In a single work like Trevisa’s translation of the De Proprietatibus
Rerum of Bartholomew Anglicus we meet with several hundred words taken over from
the Latin original. Since they are not found before this in English, we can hardly doubt
that we have here a typical instance of the way such words first came to be used. The
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were especially prolific in Latin borrowings. An
anonymous writer of the first half of the fifteenth century complains that it is not easy to
translate from Latin into English, for “there ys many wordes in Latyn that we have no
propre Englysh accordynge therto.” 26 Wycliffe and his associates are credited with more
than a thousand Latin words not previously found in English. 27 Since many of them occur
in the so-called Wycliffe translation of the Bible and have been retained in subsequent
translations, they have passed into common
26
The Myroure of Oure Ladye, EETSES, 19, p. 7.
27
Otto Dellit, Über lateinische Elemente im Mittelenglischen (Marburg, Germany, 1905), p. 38.