A History of English Language

A history of the english language 270
which sounder opinions could be formed, most people in the eighteenth century did not
realize their importance.
205. Attempts to Reform the Vocabulary.
Similar weaknesses characterized the attempts to reform the vocabulary at this time.
Everyone felt competent to “purify” the language by proscribing words and expressions
because they were too old or too new, or were slang or cant or harsh sounding, or for no
other reason than that they disliked them. Swift’s aversions have already been referred to.
“I have done my best,” he said, “for some Years past to stop the Progress of Mobb and
Banter, but have been plainly borne down by Numbers, and betrayed by those who
promised to assist me.” George Harris objected to expressions such as chaulking out a
way, handling a subject, driving a bargain, and bolstering up an argument. In a volume
of Sketches by “Launcelot Temple” the author attacks encroach, inculcate, purport,
betwixt, methinks, and subject-matter. Of the last he says: “in the Name of every thing
that’s disgusting and detestable, what is it? Is it one or two ugly words?
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The study of Old English had its beginnings in the Reformation in an effort on the part of the
reformers to prove the continuity and independence of the English church and its doctrines. This
motive was accompanied by the desire to discredit the doctrine of the divine right of kings and to
find the source of English law and administrative practice. The first specimen of the language to be
printed, Ælfric’s Easter homily, appeared about 1566–1567 in a volume called A Testimonie of
Antiquity. In 1659 William Somner published a Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum, the first
Old English dictionary. In 1689 the first Old English grammar was published, the work of George
Hickes. In 1755 the first permanent chair of Anglo-Saxon was established at Oxford by Richard
Rawlinson. See Eleanor N. Adams, Old English Scholarship in England from 1566–1800 (New
Haven, CT, 1917); Ewald Flügel, “The History of English Philology,” Flügel Memorial Volume
(Stanford University, 1916), pp. 9–35; M. Sue Hetherington, The Beginnings of Old English
Lexicography (Austin, 1980); and Carl T.Berkhout and Milton McC.Gatch, eds., Anglo-Saxon
Scholarship: TheFirst Three Centuries (Boston, 1982).