A History of English Language

A history of the english language 172
use. The innovations of other writers were not always so fortunate. Many of them, like
the inkhorn terms of the Renaissance, were but passing experiments. Nevertheless the
permanent additions from Latin to the English vocabulary in this period are much larger
than has generally been realized.
It is unnecessary to attempt a formal classification of these borrowings. Some idea of
their range and character may be gained from a selected but miscellaneous list of
examples: abject, adjacent, allegory, conspiracy, contempt, custody, distract, frustrate,
genius, gesture, history, homicide, immune, incarnate, include, incredible, incubus,
incumbent, index, individual, infancy, inferior, infinite, innate, innumemble, intellect,
interrupt, juniper, lapidary, legal, limbo, lucrative, lunatic, magnify, malefactor,
mechanical, minor, missal, moderate, necessary, nervous, notary, ornate, picture, polite,
popular, prevent, private, project, promote, prosecute, prosody, pulpit, quiet, rational,
reject, remit, reprehend, rosary, script, scripture, scrutiny, secular, solar, solitary,
spacious, stupor, subdivide, subjugate, submit, subordinate, subscribe, substitute,
summary, superabundance, supplicate, suppress, temperate, temporal, testify, testimony,
tincture, tract, tributary, ulcer, zenith, zephyr. Here we have terms relating to law,
medicine, theology, science, and literature, words often justified in the beginning by
technical or professional use and later acquiring a wider application. Among them may be
noticed several with endings like -able, -ible, -ent, -al, -ous, -ive, and others, which thus
became familiar in English and, reinforced often by French, now form common elements
in English derivatives. All the words in the above list are accepted by the Oxford English
Dictionary as direct borrowings from Latin. But in many cases Latin words were being
borrowed by French at the same time, and the adoption of a word in English may often
have been due to the impact of both languages.
143. Aureate Terms.
The introduction of unusual words from Latin (and occasionally elsewhere) became a
conscious stylistic device in the fifteenth century, extensively used by poets and
occasionally by writers of prose. By means of such words as abusion, dispone, diurne,
equipolent, palestral, and tenebrous, poets attempted what has been described as a kind
of stylistic gilding, and this feature of their language is accordingly known as “aureate
diction.” 28 The beginnings of this tendency have been traced back to the fourteenth
century. It occurs in moderation in the poetry of Chaucer, becomes a distinct mannerism
in the work of Lydgate, and runs riot in the productions of the Scottish Chaucerians—
James I, Henryson, Dunbar, and the rest. How
28
The standard treatment of the subject is John C.Mendenhall, Aureate Terms (Lancaster, PA,
1919).