A History of English Language

The renaissance, 1500-1650 211
word in a shorter form: cautionate (caution), consolate (console), attemptate (attempt),
denunciate (denounce). Often there seems to be no explanation but chance or caprice to
account for a word’s failure to survive. Eximious (excellent, distinguished) is frequently
found in seventeenth-century literature and was used by Browning, but is now unknown
or at least very rare. Similarly, mansuetude (mildness) has a history that extends from
Chaucer to Browning, but it is no longer used. We have given up disaccustom,
disacquaint, disadorn, etc., but we say disabuse, disaffect, disagree. Shakespeare used
disquantity as a verb meaning ‘to lessen in quantity’ or ‘diminish.’ Sometimes we have
kept one part of speech and discarded another. We say exorbitant but not exorbitate (to
stray from the ordinary course), approbation but not approbate, consternation but not
consternate. The most convincing reason for the failure of a new word to take hold is that
it was not needed. Aspectable (visible), assate (to roast) and the noun assation, exolete
(faded), suppeditate (furnish, supply), and many other rejected words were unnecessary,
and there was certainly no need for temulent when we had drunk, intoxicated, and a score
of other expressions of various degrees of respectability to express the idea. We must
look upon the borrowings of this period as often experimental. New words were being
freely introduced at the judgment or caprice of the individual. They were being tried out,
sometimes in various forms. In Shakespeare’s day no one could have told whether we
should say effectual, effectuous, effectful, effectuating, or effective. Two of these five
options have survived. It was necessary for time to do the sifting.
165. Reinforcement through French.
It is not always possible to say whether a word borrowed at this time was taken over
directly from Latin or indirectly through French, for the same wholesale enrichment was
going on in French simultaneously and the same words were being introduced in both
lan-guages. Often the two streams of influence must have merged. But that English
borrowed many words from Latin firsthand is indicated in a number of ways. The word
fact represents the Latin factum and not the French fait, which was taken into English
earlier as feat. Many verbs like confiscate, congratulate, and exonerate are formed from
the Latin participle (confiscat-us, etc.) and not from the French confisquer, congratuler,
exonerer, which are derived from the infmitives confiscare, etc. Caxton has the form
confisk, which is from French, but the word did not survive in this shape. The form
prejudicate is from Latin while prejudge represents the French prejuger. In the same way
instruct and subtract show their Latin ancestry (instructus, subtractus) since the French
instruire and subtraire would have become in English instroy (like destroy) and subtray
(which is found in the fifteenth century). Our word conjugation is probably a direct
importation from Latin (conjugation-em) since the more usual form in French was
conjugaison. Sometimes the occurrence of a word in English earlier than in French (e.g.,
obtuse) points to the direct adoption from Latin, as do words like confidence, confident,
which are expressed in French by the forms confiance, confiant, but which in English are
used in senses that the French forms do not have.
There still remain, however, a good many words that might equally well have come
into English from Latin or French. Verbs like consist and explore could come either from
the Latin consistere and explorare or the French consister and explorer. Conformation,