A History of English Language

The renaissance, 1500-1650 213
seventeenth centuries in the form grenado, palisado, escalado, and cavaliero, even when
the correct Spanish form would have been granada, palisada, escalada, and caballero.
Sometimes the influence of all these languages combined to give us our English word, as
in the case of galleon,
gallery, pistol, cochineal. 33 Thus the cosmopolitan tendency, the spirit of exploration
and adventure, and the interest in the New World that was being opened up show
themselves in an interesting way in the growth of our vocabulary and contributed along
with the more intellectual forms of activity to the enrichment of the English language.
167. The Method of Introducing New Words.
The Latin words that form so important an element in the English vocabulary have
generally entered the language through the medium of writing. Unlike the Scandinavian
influence and to a large extent the French influence after the Norman Conquest, the
various Latin influences, except the earliest, have been the work of churchmen and
scholars. If the words themselves have not always been learned words, they have needed
the help of learned people to become known. This was particularly true in the
Renaissance. Even the words borrowed from the Romance languages in this period often
came in through books, and the revivals and new formations from native material were
due to the efforts of individual writers and their associates. It is impossible, of course, to
say who was responsible for the introduction of each particular word, but in certain cases
we can see individual writers at work—like Sir Thomas Elyot—conscious of their
innovations and sometimes pausing to remark upon them. Another writer who introduced
a large number of new words was Elyot’s older contemporary Sir Thomas More. To
More we owe the words absurdity, acceptance, anticipate, combustible, compatible (in
our sense), comprehensible, concomitance, congratulatory, contradictory, damnability,
denunciation, detector, dissipate, endurable, eruditely, exact, exaggerate, exasperate,
explain, extenuate, fact, frivolous, impenitent, implacable, incorporeal, indifference,
insinuate, inveigh, inviolable, irrefragable, monopoly, monosyllable, necessitate,
obstruction, paradox, pretext, and others. Elyot, besides using some of these, gives us
accommodate, adumbrate, adumbration, analogy, animate, applicate (as an alternative to
the older apply), beneficence, encyclopedia, exerp (now spelled excerpt), excogitate,
excogitation, excrement, exhaust, exordium, experience (verb), exterminate, frugality,
implacability, infrequent, inimitable, irritate, modesty, placability, etc. The lists have
been made long,
33
galleon = F. galion, Sp. galeon, Ital. galeone.
gallery = F. galerie, Sp., Port, and Ital. galeria.
pistol = F. pistole, Sp. and Ital. pistola.
cochineal = F. cochenille, Sp. cochinilla, Ital. cocciniglia.
That the Italian and Spanish words borrowed by English at this time reflect the general commerce
of ideas is clear from the fact that the same words were generally being adopted by French. Cf.
B.H.Wind, Les Mots italiens introduits en français au XVI e siècle (Deventer, Netherlands, 1928),