A History of English Language

A history of the english language 212
conflagration, and many other similar nouns may represent either Latin conformation-em,
conflagration-em, or French conformation, conflagration. It is so with words like fidelity,
ingenuity, proclivity, where the Latin fidelitat-em developed into French fidélité, but
English possessed so many words of this kind from French that it could easily have
formed others on the same pattern. So adjectives like affable, audible, jovial may
represent the Latin affabilis or the French affable, etc., and others like consequent,
modest, sublime can have come equally well from the Latin or the French forms. It is
really not important which language was the direct source of the English words because
in either case they are ultimately of Latin origin. In many cases French may have offered
a precedent for introducing the Latin words into English and may have assisted in their
general adoption.
166. Words from the Romance Languages.
Sixteenth-century purists objected to three classes of strange words, which they
characterized as inkhorn terms, oversea language, and Chaucerisms. For the foreign
borrowings in this period were by no means confined to learned words taken from Latin
and Greek. The English vocabulary at this time shows words adopted from more than
fifty languages, 31 the most important of which (besides Latin and Greek) were French,
Italian, and Spanish. English travel in France and consumption of French books are
reflected in such words as alloy, ambuscade, baluster, bigot, bizarre, bombast, chocolate,
comrade, detail, duel, entrance, equip, equipage, essay, explore, genteel, mustache,
naturalize, probability, progress, retrenchment, shock, surpass, talisman, ticket, tomato,
vogue, and volunteer. But the English also traveled frequently in Italy, observed Italian
architecture, and brought back not only Italian manners and styles of dress but also Italian
words. Protests against the Italianate Englishman are frequent in Elizabethan literature,
and the objection is not only that the Englishmen came back corrupted in morals and
affecting outlandish fashions, but that they “powdered their talk with oversea
language.” 32 Nevertheless, Italian words, like Italian fashions, were frequently adopted in
England. Words like algebra, argosy, balcony, cameo, capricio (the common form of
caprice until after the Restoration), cupola, design, granite, grotto, piazza, portico,
stanza, stucco, trill, violin, volcano began to be heard on the lips of Englishmen or to be
found in English books. Many other Italian words were introduced through French or
adapted to French forms, words like battalion, bankrupt, bastion, brigade, brusque,
carat, cavalcade, charlatan, frigate, gala, gazette, grotesque, infantry, parakeet, and
rebuff. Many of these preserved for a time their Italian form. From Spanish and
Portuguese, English adopted alligator (el lagarto, the lizard), anchovy, apricot, armada,
armadillo, banana, barricade (often barricado, as in Shakespeare), bastiment, bastinado,
bilbo, bravado, brocade (often employed in the form brocado), cannibal, canoe, cedilla,
cocoa, corral, desperado, embargo, hammock, hurricane, maize, mosquito, mulatto,
negro, peccadillo, potato, renegado (the original form of renegade), rusk, sarsaparilla,
sombrero, tobacco, and yam. Many of these words reflect the Spanish enterprise on the
sea and colonization of the American continent. Like Italian words, Spanish words
sometimes entered English through French or took a French form. Grenade, palisade,
escalade, and cavalier are examples, although commonly found in the sixteenth and