A History of English Language

A history of the english language 210
163. Reintroductions and New Meanings.
Sometimes the same word has been borrowed more than once in the course of time. The
Latin words episcopus and discus appear in Old English as bishop and dish and were
again borrowed later to make our words episcopal and disc (also dais, desk, and discus).
In the same way chaos and malignity were apparently reintroduced in the sixteenth
century. The word intelligence is used once in Gower and occasionally in the fifteenth
century, but in The Governour Elyot remarks that “intelligence is nowe used for an
elegant worde where there is mutuall treaties or appoyntementes, eyther by letters or
message.” A word when introduced a second time often carries a different meaning, and
in estimating the importance of the Latin and other loanwords of the Renaissance it is just
as essential to consider new meanings as new words. Indeed, the fact that a word had
been borrowed once before and used in a different sense is of less significance than its
reintroduction in a sense that has continued or been productive of new ones. Thus the
word fastidious is found once in 1440 with the significance ‘proud, scornful,’ but this is
of less importance than the fact that both More and Elyot use it a century later in its more
usual Latin sense of ‘distasteful, disgusting.’ From this it was possible for the modern
meaning to develop, aided no doubt by the frequent use of the word in Latin with the
force of ‘easily disgusted, hard to please, over nice.’ Chaucer uses the words artificial,
declination, hemisphere in astronomical senses, but their present use is due to the
sixteenth century; and the word abject, although found earlier in the sense of ‘cast off,
rejected,’ was reintroduced in its present meaning in the Renaissance.
164. Rejected Words.
There are some things about language that we cannot explain. One of them is why certain
words survive while others, apparently just as good, do not. Among the many new words
that were introduced into English at this time there were a goodly number that we have
not permanently retained. Some are found used a few times and then forgotten. Others
enjoyed a rather longer life without becoming in any sense popular. A few were in
sufficiently common use for a while to seem assured of a permanent place but later, for
some reason, lost favor and dropped out of use. Uncounsellable, for example, was very
common in the seventeenth century but after that practically disappeared. Some of the
new words were apparently too learned and smelled too much of the lamp. Anacephalize,
a Greek word meaning “to sum up,” was of this sort and the more unnecessary since we
had already adopted the Latin recapitulate. Deruncinate (to weed) was another, although
it was no worse than eradicate for which we had the English expression to root out.
Elyot’s adminiculation (aid) and illecebrous (delicate, alluring) are of the same sort.
Some words might logically have survived but did not. Expede (to accomplish, expedite)
would have been parallel to impede. Cohibit (to restrain) is like inhibit and prohibit.
Demit (to send away) was common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and would
have been as natural as commit or transmit, but dismiss gradually replaced it. It is in fact
not uncommon to find words discarded in favor of somewhat similar formations.
Examples are exsiccate (to dry) alongside of desiccate, emacerate (emaciate),
discongruity (incongruity), appendance (appendage). In some cases we have preferred a