A History of English Language

A history of the english language 208
Ben Jonson delivered a purge to Marston in the Poetaster (1601), relieving him of
retrograde, reciprocal, incubus, lubrical, defunct, magnificate, spurious, inflate,
turgidous, ventosity, strenuous, obstupefact, and a number of similar words. The attitude
of most people seems to have been one of compromise. No Elizabethan could avoid
wholly the use of the new words. Writers differed chiefly in the extent to which they
allied themselves with the movement or resisted the tendency. As is so often the case, the
safest course was a middle one, to borrow, but “without too manifest insolence and too
wanton affectation.”
161. Permanent Additions.
From the exaggeration of a critic like Wilson one might get the impression that much of
the effort to introduce new words into the language was pedantic and ill-advised. Some of
the words Wilson ridicules seem forced and in individual cases were certainly
unnecessary. But it would be a mistake to conclude that all or even a large part of the
additions were of this sort. Indeed the surprising thing about the movement here
described is the number of words that we owe to this period and that seem now to be
indispensable. Many of them are in such common use today that it is hard for us to realize
that to the Elizabethan they were so strange and difficult as to be a subject of controversy.
When Elyot wished to describe a democracy he said, “This manner of governaunce was
called in Greke democratia, in Latine popularis potentia, in Englisshe the rule of the
comminaltie.” If he were not to have to refer to “the rule of the commonalty” by this
roundabout phrase, he could hardly do better than to try to naturalize the Greek word.
Again he felt the need of a single word for “all maner of lerning, which of some is called
the world of science, of other the circle of doctrine, which is in one word of Greke,
encyclopedia” Though purists might object, the word encydopedia filled a need in
English, and it has lived on. The words that were introduced at this time were often basic
words—nouns, adjectives, verbs. Among nouns we may note as random examples
allurement, allusion,
29
In Strange Newes, or Four Letters Confuted (1592).
30
Pierce’s Supererogation (1593).