THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT

OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

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THE ORIGINS AND

DEVELOPMENT

OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

S I X T H E D I T I O N

±±± John Algeo

±±±±± Based ontheoriginal workof

±±±± Thomas Pyles

Australia • Brazil • Japan • Korea • Mexico • Singapore • Spain • United Kingdom • United States The Origins and

© 2010, 2005 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning

Development of the English

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Language: Sixth Edition

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John Algeo

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Preface

The Origins and Development of the English Language, Sixth Edition, continues to

focus on the facts of language rather than on any of the various contemporary the-

oretical approaches to the study of those facts. The presentation is that of fairly

traditional grammar and philology, so as not to require students to master a new

theoretical approach at the same time they are exploring the intricacies of language

history.

The focus of the book is on the internal history of the English language: its

sounds, grammar, and word stock. That linguistic history is, however, set against

the social and cultural background of the changing times. The first three chapters

are introductory, treating language in general as well as the pronunciation and or-

thography of present-day English. The succeeding central six chapters are the heart

of the book, tracing the history of the language from prehistoric Indo-European

days through Old English, Middle English, and early Modern English up to the

present time. The final three chapters deal with vocabulary—the meaning, making,

and borrowing of words.

This sixth edition of a book Thomas Pyles wrote some forty-five years ago pre-

serves the outline, emphasis, and aims of the original, as all earlier editions have.

The entire book has, however, been revised for helpfulness to students and ease of

reading. The major improvements of the fifth edition have been retained. A large

number of fresh changes have also been made, especially to make the presentation

easier to follow. The historical information has been updated in response to evolv-

ing scholarship, new examples have been added (although effective older ones have

been kept), the bibliography has been revised (including some new electronic re-

sources in addition to print media), and the glossary has been revised for clarity

and accuracy. The prose style throughout has been made more contemporary and

accessible. The author hopes that such changes will help to make the book more

useful for students and instructors alike.

v

vi

PREFACE

All of the debts acknowledged in earlier editions are still gratefully acknowl-

edged for this one. This edition has especially benefited from the critiques of the

following reviewers, whose very helpful suggestions have been followed wherever

feasible.

James E. Doan, Nova Southeastern University

Mark Alan Vinson, Crichton College

Jay Ruud, University of Central Arkansas

Elena Tapia, Eastern Connecticut State University

J. Mark Baggett, Samford University

My former doctoral student and now an admired teacher and Scholar-in-Residence

at Shorter College, Carmen Acevedo Butcher, made a major contribution by

suggesting improvements in the style and accuracy of the work, by providing new

references for the bibliography (including electronic sources), and by reviewing the

entire manuscript. My wife, Adele S. Algeo, who works with me on everything I

do, has assisted at every step of the revision. Her editorial eye is nonpareil, and

her support makes all work possible—and a pleasure.

John Algeo

Contents

PR E FAC E

v

c h a p t e r

1

Language and the English Language:

An Introduction 1

A Definition of Language

2

Language as System

2

Grammatical Signals

3

Language as Signs

5

Language as Vocal

6

Writing and Speech

6

Gestures and Speech

8

Language as Conventional

8

Language Change

10

The Notion of Linguistic Corruption

10

Language Variation

11

Correctness and Acceptability

12

Language as Human

13

Theories of the Origin of Language

13

Innate Language Ability

14

Do Birds and Beasts Really Talk?

14

Language as Communication

15

Other Characteristics of Language

16

Why Study the History of English?

17

For Further Reading

18

vii

viii

CONTENTS

c h a p t e r

2

The Sounds of Current English 20

The Organs of Speech

20

Consonants of Current English

21

Vowels of Current English

25

Vowels before [r]

28

Stress

28

Unstressed Vowels

29

Kinds of Sound Change

29

Assimilation: Sounds Become More Alike

29

Dissimilation: Sounds Become Less Alike

30

Elision: Sounds Are Omitted

30

Intrusion: Sounds Are Added

31

Metathesis: Sounds Are Reordered

31

Causes of Sound Change

31

The Phoneme

32

Differing Transcriptions

33

For Further Reading

34

c h a p t e r

3

Letters and Sounds: A Brief History of Writing 35

Ideographic and Syllabic Writing

35

From Semitic Writing to the Greek Alphabet

36

The Greek Vowel and Consonant Symbols

36

The Romans Adopt the Greek Alphabet

37

Later Developments of the Roman and Greek Alphabets

38

The Use of Digraphs

39

Additional Symbols

39

The History of English Writing

40

The Germanic Runes

40

The Anglo-Saxon Roman Alphabet

40

The Spelling of English Consonant Sounds

41

Stops

42

Fricatives

42

Affricates

43

Nasals

43

Liquids

43

Semivowels

43

The Spelling of English Vowel Sounds

43

Front Vowels

43

Central Vowel

44

Back Vowels

44

Diphthongs

45

Vowels plus [r]

45

CONTENTS

ix

Unstressed Vowels

45

Spelling Pronunciations and Pronunciation Spellings

46

Writing and History

47

For Further Reading

48

c h a p t e r

4

The Backgrounds of English 49

Indo-European Origins

50

Indo-European Culture

50

The Indo-European Homeland

50

How Indo-European Was Discovered

51

Language Typology and Language Families

52

Non-Indo-European Languages

53

Main Divisions of the Indo-European Group

55

Indo-Iranian

55

Armenian and Albanian

58

Tocharian

58

Anatolian

59

Balto-Slavic

59

Hellenic

60

Italic

60

Celtic

61

Germanic

62

Cognate Words in the Indo-European Languages

63

Inflection in the Indo-European Languages

64

Some Verb Inflections

65

Some Noun Inflections

66

Word Order in the Indo-European Languages

67

Major Changes From Indo-European to Germanic

69

First Sound Shift

71

Grimm’s Law

71

Verner’s Law

73

The Sequence of the First Sound Shift

74

West Germanic Languages

74

For Further Reading

76

c h a p t e r

5

The Old English Period (449–1100) 78

Some Key Events in the Old English Period

78

History of the Anglo-Saxons

79

Britain before the English

79

The Coming of the English

79

The English in Britain

81

x

CONTENTS

The First Viking Conquest

82

The Second Viking Conquest

83

The Scandinavians Become English

84

The Golden Age of Old English

84

Dialects of Old English

85

Pronunciation and Spelling

86

Vowels

86

Consonants

87

Handwriting

89

Stress

90

Vocabulary

90

The Germanic Word Stock

90

Gender in Old English

91

Grammar, Concord, and Inflection

92

Inflection

92

Nouns

93

i-Umlaut

95

Modern Survivals of Case and Number

96

Modifiers

96

Demonstratives

96

Adjectives

97

Adverbs

98

Pronouns

99

Personal Pronouns

99

Interrogative and Relative Pronouns

100

Verbs

101

Indicative Forms of Verbs

102

Subjunctive and Imperative Forms

102

Nonfinite Forms

102

Weak Verbs

103

Strong Verbs

103

Preterit-Present Verbs

104

Suppletive Verbs

105

Syntax

105

Old English Illustrated

108

For Further Reading

111

c h a p t e r

6

The Middle English Period (1100–1500) 112

Some Key Events in the Middle English Period

112

The Background of the Norman Conquest

113

The Reascendancy of English

114

Foreign Influences on Vocabulary

115

Middle English Spelling

116

CONTENTS

xi

Consonants

116

Vowels

118

The Rise of a London Standard

119

Changes in Pronunciation

122

Principal Consonant Changes

122

Middle English Vowels

123

Changes in Diphthongs

124

Lengthening and Shortening of Vowels

126

Leveling of Unstressed Vowels

127

Loss of Schwa in Final Syllables

127

Changes in Grammar

128

Reduction of Inflections

128

Loss of Grammatical Gender

129

Nouns, Pronouns, and Adjectives

129

The Inflection of Nouns

129

Personal Pronouns

130

Demonstrative Pronouns

132

Interrogative and Relative Pronouns

133

Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

133

Verbs

133

Personal Endings

134

Participles

135

Word Order

135

Middle English Illustrated

136

For Further Reading

138

c h a p t e r

7

The Early Modern English Period (1500–1800):

Society, Spellings, and Sounds 139

Some Key Events in the Early Modern Period

139

The Transition from Middle to Modern English

140

Expansion of the English Vocabulary

140

Innovation of Pronunciation and Conservation of Spelling

141

The Orthography of Early Modern English

141

The Great Vowel Shift

144

Other Vowels

147

Stressed Short Vowels

147

Diphthongs

148

Quantitative Vowel Changes

149

Early Modern English Consonants

149

Evidence for Early Modern Pronunciation

151

Stress

151

Scholarly Studies

151

xii

CONTENTS

Early Modern English Illustrated

152

Spelling

152

Pronunciation

153

For Further Reading

155

c h a p t e r

8

The Early Modern English Period (1500–1800):

Forms, Syntax, and Usage 156

The Study of Language

157

Early Dictionaries

157

Eighteenth-Century Attitudes toward Grammar and

Usage

158

Nouns

160

Irregular Plurals

161

His-Genitive

161

Group Genitive

162

Uninflected Genitive

163

Adjectives and Adverbs

163

Pronouns

164

Personal Pronouns

164

Relative and Interrogative Pronouns

168

Case Forms of the Pronouns

169

Verbs

170

Classes of Strong Verbs

170

Endings for Person and Number

176

Contracted Forms

177

Expanded Verb Forms

178

Other Verbal Constructions

179

Prepositions

179

Early Modern English Further Illustrated

180

c h a p t e r

9

Late Modern English (1800–Present) 181

Some Key Events in the Late Modern Period

181

The National Varieties of English

182

Conservatism and Innovation in American English

183

National Differences in Word Choice

185

American Infiltration of the British Word Stock

186

Syntactical and Morphological Differences

187

British and American Purism

188

Dictionaries and the Facts

189

National Differences in Pronunciation

190

British and American Spelling

193

Variation within National Varieties

194

CONTENTS

xiii

Kinds of Variation

194

Regional Dialects

195

Ethnic and Social Dialects

196

Stylistic Variation

198

Variation within British English

198

World English

199

Irish English

199

Indian English

201

The Essential Oneness of All English

202

For Further Reading

202

c h a p t e r

1 0

Words and Meanings 206

Semantics and Change of Meaning

207

Variable and Vague Meanings

208

Etymology and Meaning

208

How Meaning Changes

209

Generalization and Specialization

210

Transfer of Meaning

211

Association of Ideas

212

Transfer from Other Languages

212

Sound Associations

213

Pejoration and Amelioration

213

Taboo and Euphemism

214

The Fate of Intensifying Words

217

Some Circumstances of Semantic Change

218

Vogue for Words of Learned Origin

219

Language and Semantic Marking

220

Semantic Change is Inevitable

222

For Further Reading

223

c h a p t e r

1 1

New Words from Old 224

Creating Words

224

Root Creations

224

Echoic Words

225

Ejaculations

225

Combining Words: Compounding

227

Spelling and Pronunciation of Compounds

227

Amalgamated Compounds

229

Function and Form of Compounds

230

Combining Word Parts: Affixing

230

Affixes from Old English

230

Affixes from Other Languages

232

xiv

CONTENTS

Voguish Affixes

233

Shortening Words

235

Clipped Forms

235

Initialisms: Alphabetisms and Acronyms

236

Apheretic and Aphetic Forms

237

Back-Formations

238

Blending Words

239

New Morphemes from Blending

239

Folk Etymology

241

Shifting Words to New Uses

242

One Part of Speech to Another

242

Common Words from Proper Names

243

Sources of New Words

245

Distribution of New Words

245

For Further Reading

246

c h a p t e r

1 2

Foreign Elements in the English Word Stock 247

Popular and Learned Loanwords

248

Latin and Greek Loanwords

248

Latin Influence in the Germanic Period

248

Latin Words in Old English

249

Latin Words Borrowed in Middle English Times

250

Latin Words Borrowed in Modern English Times

251

Greek Loanwords

251

Celtic Loanwords

252

Scandinavian Loanwords

253

Old and Middle English Borrowings

253

Modern English Borrowings

254

French Loanwords

254

Middle English Borrowings

254

Later French Loanwords

256

Spanish and Portuguese Loanwords

258

Italian Loanwords

259

Germanic Loanwords

260

Loanwords from Low German

260

Loanwords from High German

261

Loanwords from the East

262

Near East

262

Iran and India

263

Far East and Australasia

264

Other Sources

265

Loanwords from African Languages

265

Slavic, Hungarian, Turkish, and American Indian

266

CONTENTS

xv

The Sources of Recent Loanwords

266

English Remains English

267

For Further Reading

268

S e l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a p h y

269

G l o s s a r y

281

I n d e x o f M o d e r n E n g l i s h Wo r d s a n d

A f f i x e s

301

I n d e x o f P e r s o n s , P l a c e s , a n d To p i c s

329

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±±±±±±

Language and the

±±±±±±

1

± C H A P T E R

±±±±

English Language

±

An Introduction

The English language has had a remarkable history. When we first catch sight of

it in historical records, it is the speech of some none-too-civilized tribes on the

continent of Europe along the North Sea. Of course, it had a still earlier history,

going back perhaps to somewhere in eastern Europe or western Asia, and long

before that to origins we can only speculate about. From those murky and undisting-

uished beginnings, English has become the most widespread language in the world,

used by more peoples for more purposes than any other language on Earth. How

the English language changed from being the speech of a few small tribes

to becoming the major language of the Earth—and in the process itself changed rad-

ically—is the subject of this book.

Whatever language we speak—English, Chinese, Hindi, Swahili, or Arapaho—

helps to define us personally and identify the community we belong to. But the fact

that we can talk at all, the fact that we have a language, is inextricably bound up

with our humanity. To be human is to use language, and to talk is to be a person.

As the biologist and author Lewis Thomas wrote:

The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us

apart from the rest of life. Language is, like nest-building or hive-making, the universal

and biologically specific activity of human beings. We engage in it communally,

compulsively, and automatically. We cannot be human without it; if we were to be

separated from it our minds would die, as surely as bees lost from the hive.

(Lives of a Cell 89)

The language gift that is innate in us is not English or indeed any specific

language. It is instead the ability to learn and to use a human language. When we

say, “Bread is the staff of life,” we do not mean any particular kind of bread—

whole wheat, rye, pumpernickel, French, matzo, pita, or whatever sort. We are

talking instead about the kind of thing bread is, what all bread has in common.

So also, when we say that language is the basis of our humanity, we do not mean

any particular language—English, Spanish, Japanese, Tagalog, Hopi, or ASL

(American Sign Language of the deaf). Rather we mean the ability to learn and

1

2

chapter 1

use any such particular language system, an ability that all human beings naturally

have. This ability is language in the abstract, as distinct from any individual

language system.

A DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE

A language is a system of conventional vocal signs by means of which human

beings communicate. This definition has several important terms, each of which is

examined in some detail in the following sections. Those terms are system, signs,

vocal, conventional, human, and communicate.

LANGUAGE AS SYSTEM

Perhaps the most important word in the definition of language is system. We speak

in patterns. A language is not just a collection of words, such as we find in a dictio-

nary. It is also the rules or patterns that relate our words to one another.

Every language has two levels to its system—a characteristic that is called

duality of patterning. One of these levels consists of meaningful units—for example,

the words and word parts such as Adam, like, -d, apple, and -s in the sentence

“Adam liked apples.” The other level consists of units that have no meaning in

themselves, although they serve as components of the meaningful units—for exam-

ple, the sounds represented by the letters a, d, and m in the word Adam.

The distinction between a meaningful word (Adam) and its meaningless parts

(a, d, and m) is important. Without that distinction, language as we know it

would be impossible. If every meaning had to be represented by a unique, unanalyz-

able sound, only a few such meanings could be expressed. We have only about 35

basic sounds in English; we have hundreds of thousands of words. Duality of pat-

terning lets us build an immensely large number of meaningful words out of only a

handful of meaningless sounds. It is perhaps the chief characteristic that distin-

guishes true human language from the simpler communication systems of all non-

human animals.

The meaningless components of a language are its sound system, or phonology.

The meaningful units are its lexis, or vocabulary, and its grammatical system, or

morphosyntax. All have patterning. Thus, according to the sound system of

Modern English, the consonant combination mb never occurs at the beginning or

at the end of any word. As a matter of fact, it did occur in final position in earlier

stages of our language, which is why it was necessary in the preceding statement to

specify “Modern English.” Despite the complete absence of the sounds mb at the

ends of English words for at least 600 years, we still insist on writing—such is the

conservatism of writing habits—the b in lamb, climb, tomb, dumb, and a number

of other words. But this same combination, which now occurs only medially in

English (as in tremble), may well occur finally or even initially in other languages.

Initial mb is indeed a part of the systems of certain African languages, as in Efik

and Ibibio mbakara ‘white man,’ which became buckra in the speech of the

Gullahs—black Americans living along the coastal region of Georgia and South

Carolina who have preserved a number of words and structural features that their

ancestors brought from Africa. It is notable that the Gullahs simplified the initial

language and the english language

3

consonant combination of this African word to conform to the pattern of English

speech.

The lexis or vocabulary of a language is its least systematic aspect. Grammar is

sometimes defined as everything in a language that can be stated in general rules,

and lexis as everything that is unpredictable. But that is not quite true. Certain com-

binations of words, called collocations, are more or less predictable. Mild and

gentle are words of very similar meaning, but they go with different nouns: “mild

weather” and “gentle breeze” are somewhat more likely than the opposite combi-

nations (“mild breeze” and “gentle weather”). A case of the flu may be severe or

mild; a judgment is likely to be severe or lenient. A “mild judgment” would be a

bit odd, and a “lenient case of the flu” sounds like a joke. Some collocations are

so regular that they are easily predictable. In the following sentence, one word is

more probable than any other in the blank: “In its narrow cage, the lion paced

back and

.” Although several words are possible in the blank (for exam-

ple, forward or even ahead), forth is the most likely. Some combinations are

completely predictable: “They ran

fro.” Fro is normal in present-day

English only in the expression “to and fro.” The tendency of certain words to

collocate or go together is an instance of system in the vocabulary.

In the grammatical system of English, a very large number of words take a suffix

written as -s to indicate plurality or possession. In the latter case, it is a comparatively

recent convention of writing to add an apostrophe. Words that can be thus modified

are nouns. They fit into certain patterns in English utterances. Alcoholic, for instance,

fits into the system of English in the same way as duck, dog, and horse: “Alcoholics

need understanding” (compare “Ducks need water”), “An alcoholic’s perceptions are

faulty” (compare “A dog’s perceptions are keen”), and the like. But that word can

also modify a noun and be modified by an adverb: “an alcoholic drink,” “somewhat

alcoholic,” and the like; and words that operate in the latter way are called adjec-

tives. Alcoholic is thus either an adjective or a noun, depending on the way it func-

tions in the system of English. The utterance “Alcoholic worries” is ambiguous

because our system, like all linguistic systems, is not completely foolproof. It might

be either a noun followed by a verb (in a newspaper headline) or an adjective fol-

lowed by a noun. To know which interpretation is correct, we need a context for

the expression. That is, we need to relate it to a larger structure.

Grammatical Signals

The grammatical system of any language has various techniques for relating words

to one another within the structure of a sentence. The following kinds of signals are

especially important.

• Parts of speech are grammatical categories into which we can classify words.

The four major ones are noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. Some words belong

primarily or solely to one part of speech: child is a noun, seek is a verb, tall is

an adjective, and rapidly is an adverb. Other words can function as more than

one part of speech; in various meanings, last can be any of the four major

parts. English speakers move words about pretty freely from one part of speech

to another, as when we call a book that is enjoyable to read “a good read,”

4

chapter 1

making a noun out of a verb. Part of knowing English is knowing how words

can be shifted in that way and what the limits are to such shifting.

• Affixes are one or more added sounds or letters that change a word’s meaning

and sometimes alter its part of speech. When an affix comes at the front of a

word, it is a prefix, such as the en- in encipher, enrage, enthrone, entomb,

entwine, and enwrap, which marks those words as verbs. When an affix comes

at the back of a word, it is a suffix, such as the -ist in dentist, geologist,

motorist, and violinist, which marks those words as nouns. English has a small

number of inflectional suffixes (endings that mark distinctions of number, case,

person, tense, mood, and comparison). They include the plural -s and the

possessive ’s used with nouns (boys, boy’s); the third person singular present

tense -s, the past tense and past participle -ed, and the present participle -ing

used with verbs (aids, aided, aiding); and the comparative -er and superlative

-est used with some adjectives and adverbs (slower, slowest). Inflection (the

change in form of a word to mark such distinctions) may also involve internal

change, as in the singular and plural noun forms man and men or the present

and past verb forms sing and sang. A language that depends heavily on the use

of inflections, either internal or affixed, is said to be synthetic; English used to

be far more synthetic than it now is.

• Concord, or agreement, is an interconnection between words, especially

marked by their inflections. Thus, “The bird sings” and “The birds sing”

illustrate subject-verb concord. (It is just a coincidence that the singular ending

of some verbs is identical in form with the plural ending of some nouns.)

Similarly, in “this day” both words are singular, and in “these days” both are

plural; some languages, such as Spanish, require that all modifiers agree with

the nouns they modify in number, but in English only this and that change

their form to show such agreement. Highly synthetic languages, such as Latin,

usually have a great deal of concord; thus Latin adjectives agree with the nouns

they modify in number (bonus vir ‘good man,’ bonī virī ‘good men’), in gender

(bona femina ‘good woman’), and in case (bonae feminae ‘good woman’s’).

English once used concord more than it now does.

• Word order is a grammatical signal in all languages, though some languages,

like English, depend more heavily on it than others do. “The man finished the

job” and “The job finished the man” are sharply different in meaning, as are

“He died happily” and “Happily he died.”

• Function words are minor parts of speech (for example, articles, auxiliaries,

conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and certain adverbial particles) that serve

as grammatical signals used with word order to serve some of the same

functions as inflections. For example, in English the indirect object of a verb

can be shown by either word order (“I gave the dog a bone”) or a function

word (“I gave a bone to the dog”); in Latin it is shown by inflection (canis ‘the

dog,’ Canī os dēdi ‘To-the-dog a-bone I-gave’). A language like English whose

grammar depends heavily on the use of word order and function words is said

to be analytic.

• Prosodic signals, such as pitch, stress, and tempo, can indicate grammatical

meaning. The difference between the statement “He’s here” and the question

language and the english language

5

“He’s here?” is the pitch used at the end of the sentence. The chief difference

between the verb conduct and the noun conduct is that the verb has a stronger

stress on its second syllable and the noun on its first syllable. In “He died

happily” and “He died, happily,” the tempo of the last two words makes an

important difference of meaning.

All languages have these kinds of grammatical signals available to them, but

languages differ greatly in the use they make of the various signals. And even a

single language may change its use over time, as English has.

LANGUAGE AS SIGNS

In language, signs are what the system organizes. A sign is something that stands

for something else—for example, a word like apple, which stands for the familiar

fruit. But linguistic signs are not words alone; they may also be either smaller or

larger than whole words. The smallest linguistic sign is the morpheme, a meaningful

form that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. The word apple is a

single morpheme; applejack consists of two morphemes, each of which can also

function independently as a word. Apples also has two morphemes, but one (-s)

can occur only as part of a word. Morphemes that can be used alone as words

(such as apple and jack) are called free morphemes. Those that must be combined

with other morphemes to make a word (such as -s) are bound morphemes. The

word reactivation has five morphemes in it (one free and four bound), as a step-

by-step analysis shows:

re-activation

activate-ion

active-ate

act-ive

Thus reactivation has one free morpheme (act) and four bound morphemes (re-, -ive,

-ate, and -ion).

A word cannot be divided into morphemes just by sounding out its syllables.

Some morphemes, like apple, have more than one syllable; others, like -s, are less

than a syllable. A morpheme is a form (a sequence of sounds) with a recognizable

meaning. Knowing a word’s early history, or etymology, may be useful in dividing

it into morphemes, but the decisive factor is the form-meaning link.

A morpheme may, however, have more than one pronunciation or spelling. For

example, the regular noun plural ending has two spellings (-s and -es) and three

pronunciations (an s-sound as in backs, a z-sound as in bags, and a vowel plus

z-sound as in batches). Each spoken variation is called an allomorph of the plural

morpheme. Similarly, when the morpheme -ate is followed by -ion (as in activate-

ion), the t of -ate combines with the i of -ion as the sound “sh” (so we might spell

the word “activashon”). Such allomorphic variation is typical of the morphemes of

English, even though the spelling does not represent it.

Morphemes can also be classified as base morphemes and affixes. An affix is a

bound morpheme that is added to a base morpheme, either a prefix (such as re-) or

a suffix (such as -s, -ive, -ate, and -ion). Most base morphemes are free (such as

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apple and act), but some are bound (such as the insul- of insulate). A word that has

two or more bases (such as applejack) is called a compound.

A linguistic sign may be word-sized or smaller—a free or a bound morpheme.

But it may also be larger than a word. An idiom is a combination of words whose

meaning cannot be predicted from its constituent parts. One kind of idiom is the

combination of a verb with an adverb, a preposition, or both—for instance, turn

on (a light), call up (on the telephone), take over (a business), ask for (a job), come

down with (an illness), and go back on (a promise). Such an expression is a single

semantic unit: to go back on is to ‘abandon’ a promise. But from the standpoint of

grammar, several independent words are involved.

LANGUAGE AS VOCAL

Language is a system that can be expressed in many ways—by the marks on paper

or a computer screen that we call writing, by hand signals and gestures as in sign

language, by colored lights or moving flags as in semaphore, and by electronic

clicks as in old-fashioned telegraphy. However, the signs of language—its words

and morphemes—are basically vocal, or oral-aural, being sounds produced by the

mouth and received by the ear. If human communication had developed primarily

as a system of gestures (like the sign language of the deaf), it would have been quite

different from what it is. Because sounds follow one another sequentially in time,

language has a one-dimensional quality (like the letters we use to represent it in

writing), whereas gestures can fill the three dimensions of space as well as the

fourth dimension of time. The ears can hear sounds coming from any direction,

but the eyes can see gestures made only in front of them. The ears can hear through

physical barriers, such as walls, which the eyes cannot see through. Speech has both

advantages and disadvantages in comparison with gestures; but on the whole, it is

undoubtedly superior, as its evolutionary survival demonstrates.

Writing and Speech

Because writing has become so important in our culture, we sometimes think of it as

more real than speech. A little thought, however, will show why speech is primary

and writing secondary to language. Human beings have been writing (as far as we

can tell from the surviving evidence) for at least 5000 years; but they have been talk-

ing for much longer, doubtless ever since they were fully human. When writing devel-

oped, it was derived from and represented speech, albeit imperfectly (see Chapter 3).

Even today there are spoken languages that have no written form. Furthermore, we

learn to talk long before we learn to write; any human child without physical or men-

tal limitations will learn to talk, and most human beings cannot be prevented from

doing so. It is as though we were “programmed” to acquire language in the form of

speech. On the other hand, it takes a special effort to learn to write. In the past, many

intelligent and useful members of society did not acquire that skill, and even today

many who speak languages with writing systems never learn to read or write, while

some who learn the rudiments of those skills do so only imperfectly.

To affirm the primacy of speech over writing is not, however, to disparage the

latter. If speaking makes us human, writing makes us civilized. Writing has some

language and the english language

7

advantages over speech. For example, it is more permanent, thus making possible

the records that any civilization must have. Writing is also capable of easily making

some distinctions that speech can make only with difficulty. We can, for example,

indicate certain types of pauses more clearly by the spaces that we leave between

words when we write than we ordinarily are able to do when we speak. Grade A

may well be heard as gray day, but there is no mistaking the one phrase for the

other in writing.

Similarly, the comma distinguishes “a pretty, hot day” from “a pretty hot day”

more clearly than these phrases are often distinguished in actual speech. But the

question mark does not distinguish between “Why did you do it?” (I didn’t hear

you the first time you told me), with rising pitch at the end, and “Why did you do

it?” (You didn’t tell me), with falling terminal pitch. Nor can we show in writing

the difference between sound quality ‘tone’ (as in “The sound quality of the record-

ing was excellent”) and sound quality ‘good grade’ (as in “The materials were of

sound quality”)—a difference that we signal very easily in speech by strongly stres-

sing sound in the first sentence and the first syllable of quality in the second.

Incense ‘enrage’ and incense ‘aromatic substance for burning’ are likewise sharply

differentiated in speech by the position of the stress, as sewer ‘conduit’ and sewer

‘one who sews’ are differentiated by vowel quality. In writing we can distinguish

those words only in context.

Words that are pronounced alike are called homophones. They may be spelled

the same, such as bear ‘carry’ and bear ‘animal,’ or they may be distinguished in

spelling, such as bare ‘naked’ and either of the bear words. Words that are written

alike are called homographs. They may also be pronounced the same, such as the

two bear words or tear ‘to rip’ and tear ‘spree’ (as in “He went on a tear”), or

they may be distinguished in pronunciation, such as tear ‘a drop from the eye’ and

either of the other two tear words. Homonym is a term that covers either homo-

phones or homographs, that is, a word either pronounced or spelled like another,

such as all bear/bare and tear words.

Homophones are the basis of puns, as in childish jokes about “a bear behind”

and “seven days without chocolate make one weak,” whose written forms resolve

the ambiguity of their spoken forms. But William Shakespeare was by no means

averse to this sort of thing: puns involving tale and tail, whole and hole, hoar and

whore, and a good many other homophones (some, like stale and steal, no longer

homophonous) occur rather frequently in the writings of our greatest poet.

The conventions of writing differ somewhat from those of ordinary speech.

For instance, we ordinarily write was not, do not, and would not, although we

usually say wasn’t, don’t, and wouldn’t. Furthermore, our choice of words is

likely to be different in writing and in everyday speech. But these are stylistic mat-

ters, as is also the fact that writing tends to be somewhat more conservative than

speech.

Representing the spellings of one language by those of another is transliteration,

which must not be confused with translation, the interpretation of one language by

another. Greek πυρ can be transliterated pyr, as in pyromaniac, or translated fire, as

in firebug. One language can be written in several orthographies (or writing systems).

When the president of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later called Kemal Atatürk), in

1928 substituted the Roman alphabet for the Arabic in writing Turkish, the Turkish

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language changed no more than time changed when he introduced the Gregorian

calendar in his country to replace the Islamic lunar one used earlier.

Gestures and Speech

Such specialized gestures as the indifferent shrug of the shoulders, the admonitory

shaking of the finger, the lifting up of the hand in greeting and the waving of it in

parting, the widening of the eyes in astonishment, the scornful lifting of the brows,

the approving nod, and the disapproving sideways shaking of the head—all these

need not accompany speech at all; they themselves communicate. Indeed, there is

some reason to think that gestures are older than spoken language and are the matrix

out of which it developed. Like language itself, such gestures vary in use and meaning

from one culture to another. In India, a sideways wagging of the head indicates that

the head-wagger understands what another person is saying. When gestures accom-

pany speech, they may be more or less unconscious, like the crossed arms of a person

talking with another, indicating a lack of openness to the other’s ideas. The study of

such communicative body movements is known as kinesics.

Our various tones of voice—the drawl, the sneer, the shout, the whimper, the

simper, and the like—also play a part in communication (which we recognize when

we say, “I didn’t mind what he said, I just didn’t like the way he said it”). The tones

and gestures that accompany speech are not language, but rather parallel systems of

communication called paralanguage. Other vocalizations that are communicative,

like laughing, crying, groaning, and yelping, usually do not accompany speech as

tones of voice do, though they may come before or after it.

LANGUAGE AS CONVENTIONAL

Writing is obviously conventional because we can represent the same language

by more than one writing system. Japanese, for example, is written with kanji

(ideographs representing whole words), with either of two syllabaries (writing

systems that present each syllable with a separate symbol), or with the letters of

the Roman alphabet. Similarly, we could by general agreement reform English

spelling (soe dhat, for egzammpul, wee spelt it liek dhis). We can change the

conventions of our writing system merely by agreeing to do so.

Although it is not so obvious, speech is also conventional. To be sure, all

languages share certain natural, inherent, or universal features. The human vocal

apparatus (lips, teeth, tongue, and so forth) makes it inevitable that human

languages have only a limited range of sounds. Likewise, since all of us live in

the same universe and perceive our universe through the same senses with more

or less the same basic mental equipment, it is hardly surprising that we should

find it necessary to talk about more or less the same things in more or less similar

ways.

Nevertheless, the world’s many languages are conventional and generally

arbitrary; that is to say, there is usually no connection between the sounds we

make and the phenomena of life. A comparatively small number of echoic words

imitate, more or less closely, other sounds. Bow-wow seems to English speakers to

language and the english language

9

be a fairly accurate imitation of the sound made by a dog and therefore not to be

wholly arbitrary, but it is highly doubtful that a dog would agree, particularly a

French dog, which says gnaf-gnaf, or a German one, which says wau-wau, or a

Japanese one, which says wung-wung. In Norway cows do not say “moo” but

mmmøøø, sheep do not say “baa” but mæ, and pigs do not say “oink” but nøff-

nøff. Norwegian hens very sensibly say klukk-klukk, though doubtless with a

heavy Norwegian accent. The process of echoing such sounds (also called onomato-

poeia) is conventional.

Most people assume that their language is the best—and so it is for them,

because they mastered it well enough for their own purposes so long ago that they

cannot remember when or how. It seems to them more logical and sensible, more

natural, than the way others talk. But there is nothing really natural about any lan-

guage, since all these highly systematized and conventionalized methods of human

communication must be acquired. There is, for instance, nothing natural in our use

of is in such a sentence as “The woman is busy.” The utterance can be made just as

effectively without that verb, and some languages do get along perfectly well with-

out it. This use of the verb to be was, as a matter of fact, late in developing and

never developed in Russian.

To the speaker of Russian it is more “natural” to say “Zhenshchina zanyata”—

literally, “Woman busy”—which sounds to our ears so much like baby talk that the

unsophisticated speaker of English might well (though quite wrongly) conclude that

Russian is a childish tongue. The system of Russian also manages to struggle along

without the definite article the. As a matter of fact, the speaker of Russian never

misses it—nor should we if it had not become conventional with us.

To a naive speaker of English, calling the organ of sight eye may seem perfectly

natural, and those who call it anything else—like the Germans, who call it Auge,

the Russians, who call it glaz, or the Japanese, who call it me—are likely to be

regarded as unfortunate because they do not speak languages in which things are

properly named. The fact is, however, that eye, which we pronounce exactly like I

(a fact that might be cited against it by a foreign speaker), is the name of the organ

only in present-day English. It has not always been so. Londoners of the fourteenth

century pronounced the word with two syllables, something like “ee-eh.” If we

chose to go back to King Alfred’s day in the late ninth century, we would find yet

another form of the word from which Modern English eye developed. The Scots are

not being quaint or perverse when they say “ee” for eye, as in Robert Burns’s poem

“To a Mouse”:

Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But och! I backward cast my e’e,

On prospects drear!

The Scots form is merely a variant of the word—a perfectly legitimate pronuncia-

tion that happens not to occur in standard Modern English. Knowledge of such

changes within a single language should dissipate the notion that any word is

more appropriate than any other word, except in a purely chronological and social

sense.

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Language Change

Change is normal in language. Every language is constantly turning into something

different, and when we hear a new word or a new pronunciation or use of an old

word, we may be catching the early stages of a change. Change is natural because a

language system is culturally transmitted. Like other conventional matters—such as

fashions in clothing, hairstyles, cooking, entertainment, and government—language

is constantly being revised. Language evolves more slowly than do some other

cultural activities, but its change is continuous and inevitable.

There are three general causes of language change. First, words and sounds may

affect neighboring words and sounds. For example, sandwich is often pronounced,

not as the spelling suggests, but in ways that might be represented as “sanwich,”

“sanwidge,” “samwidge,” or even “sammidge.” Such spellings look illiterate, but

they represent perfectly normal, though informal, pronunciations that result from

the position of a sound within the word. When nearby elements thus influence one

another within the flow of speech, the result is called syntagmatic change.

Second, words and sounds may be affected by others that are not immediately

present but with which they are associated. For example, the side of a ship on

which it was laden (that is, loaded) was called the ladeboard, but its opposite, star-

board, influenced a change in pronunciation to larboard. Then, because larboard was

likely to be confused with starboard because of their similarity of sound, it was gen-

erally replaced by port. Such change is called paradigmatic or associative change.

Third, a language may change because of the influence of events in the world.

New technologies like the World Wide Web require new forms like google ‘to

search the Internet for information’ and wiki (as in Wikipedia) ‘a Website, data-

base, or software for creating Web sites, especially collaborative ones,’ from the

Hawaiian word for ‘fast.’ New forms of human behavior, however bizarre, require

new terms like suicide bomber. New concepts in science require new terms like

transposon ‘a transposable gene in DNA.’ In addition, new contacts with persons

who use speechways different from our own may affect our pronunciation, vocabu-

lary, and even grammar. Social change thus modifies speech.

The documented history of the English language begins about A.D. 700, with

the oldest written records. We can reconstruct some of the prehistory before that

time, to as early as about 4000 B.C., but the farther back in time we go, the less

certain we can be about what the language was like. The history of our language

is traditionally divided into three periods: Old English, from the earliest records

(or from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England around A.D. 450) to about 1100;

Middle English, approximately from 1100 to 1500; and Modern English, since

about 1500. The lines dividing the three periods are based on significant changes

in the language about those times, but major cultural changes around 1100 and

1500 also contribute to our sense of new beginnings. These matters are treated in

detail in Chapters 5 through 8.

The Notion of Linguistic Corruption

A widely held notion resulting from a misunderstanding of change is that there are

ideal forms of languages, thought of as “pure,” and that existing languages repre-

sent corruptions of earlier ideal ones. Thus, the Greek spoken today is supposed to

language and the english language

11

be a degraded form of Classical Greek rather than what it really is, a development

of it. Since the Romance languages are developments of Latin, it would follow from

this point of view that they also are corrupt, although this assumption is not usually

made. Those who admire or profess to admire Latin literature sometimes suppose

that a stage of perfection had been reached in Classical Latin and that every subse-

quent development in Latin was an irreparable deterioration. From this point of

view, the late development of Latin spoken in the early Middle Ages (sometimes

called Vulgar, or popular, Latin) is “bad” Latin, which, strange as it may seem,

was ultimately to become “good” Italian, French, Spanish, and so on.

Because we hear so much about “pure” English, we might carefully examine this

notion. When Captain Frederick Marryat, an English novelist, visited the United

States in 1837–1838, he thought it “remarkable how very debased the language has

become in a short period in America,” adding that “if their lower classes are more

intelligible than ours, it is equally true that the higher classes do not speak the

language so purely or so classically as it is spoken among the well-educated

English.” Both statements are nonsense. The first is based on the captain’s apparent

notion that the English language had reached a stage of perfection at the time

English-speaking people first settled America. After this, presumably because of the

innate depravity of those English settlers who brought their language to the New

World, it had taken a steadily downward course, whatever that may mean. One

wonders also precisely how Marryat knew what constituted “classical” or “pure”

English. It is probable that he was merely attributing certain superior qualities to

that type of English that he was accustomed to hear from persons of good social

standing in the land of his birth and that he himself spoke. Any divergence was

“debased”: “My speech is pure; thine, wherein it differs from mine, is corrupt.”

Language Variation

In addition to its change through the years, at any given period of time a language

exists in many varieties. Historical, or diachronic, variation is matched by contem-

porary, or synchronic, variation. The latter is of two kinds: dialects and registers.

A dialect is the variety of a language associated with a particular place (Boston

or New Orleans), social level (standard or nonstandard), ethnic group (Jewish or

African-American), sex (male or female), age grade (teenage or mature), and so

on. Most of us have a normal way of using language that is an intersection of

such dialects and that marks us as being, for example, a middle-aged, white, cul-

tured, female Charlestonian of old family or a young, urban, working-class, male

Hispanic from New York City. Some people have more than one such dialect

personality; national politicians, for example, may use a Washingtonian govern-

ment dialect when they are doing their job and a “down-home” dialect when they

are interacting with their voters. Ultimately, each of us has a unique, personal way

of using language, an idiolect, which identifies us for those who know us.

A register is the variety of a language used for a particular purpose: sermon

language (which may have a distinctive rhythm and sentence melody and include

words like brethren and beloved), restaurant-menu language (which is full of

“tasty adjectives” like garden-fresh and succulent), telephone-conversation language

(in which the speech of the secondary participant is full of uh-huh, I see, yeah, and

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oh), postcard language (in which the subjects of sentences are frequently omitted:

“Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.”), and e-mail and instant-messaging

language with abbreviations like BTDT (been there, done that), CUL8ER (see you

later), CYO (see you online), and LOL (laughing out loud). Everyone uses several

registers, and the more varied the circumstances under which we talk and write, the

more registers we use.

The dialects we speak help to define who we are. They tell those who hear us

where we come from, our social or ethnic identification, and other such intimate

facts about us. The registers we use reflect the circumstances in which we are com-

municating. They indicate where we are speaking or writing, to whom, via what

medium, about what subject, and for what purpose. Dialects and registers provide

options—alternative ways of using language. And those options confront us with

the question of what is the right or best alternative.

Correctness and Acceptability

The concept of an absolute and unwavering, presumably God-given standard of

linguistic correctness (sometimes confused with “purity”) is widespread, even among

the educated. Those who subscribe to this notion become greatly exercised over such

matters as split infinitives, the “incorrect” position of only, and prepositions at the

ends of sentences. All these supposed “errors” have been committed time and again

by eminent writers and speakers, so that one wonders how those who condemn them

know that they are bad. Robert Lowth, who wrote one of the most influential

English grammars of the eighteenth century (A Short Introduction to English

Grammar, 1762), was praised by one of his admirers for showing “the grammatic

inaccuracies that have escaped the pens of our most distinguished writers.”

One would suppose that the language of “our most distinguished writers”

would be good usage. But Lowth and his followers knew, or thought they knew,

better; and their attitude survives to this day. This is not, of course, to deny that

there are standards of usage, but only to suggest that standards must be based on

the usage of speakers and writers of generally acknowledged excellence—quite a

different thing from a subservience to the mandates of badly informed “authorities”

who are guided by their own prejudices rather than by a study of the actual usage

of educated and accomplished speakers and writers.

To talk about “correctness” in language implies that there is some abstract,

absolute standard by which words and grammar can be judged; something is either

“correct” or “incorrect”—and that’s all there is to that. But the facts of language

are not so clean-cut. Instead, many students of usage today prefer to talk about

acceptability, that is, the degree to which users of a language will judge an expres-

sion as OK or will let its use pass without noticing anything out of the ordinary. An

acceptable expression is one that people do not object to, indeed do not even notice

unless it is called to their attention.

Acceptability is not absolute, but is a matter of degree; one expression may be

more or less acceptable than another. “If I were in your shoes” may be judged more

acceptable than “If I was in your shoes,” but both are considerably more accept-

able than “If we was in your shoes.” Moreover, acceptability is not abstract,

but is related to some group of people whose response it reflects. Thus most

language and the english language

13

Americans pronounce the past-tense verb ate like eight and regard any other

pronunciation as unacceptable. Many Britons, on the other hand, pronounce it as

“ett” and find the American preference less acceptable. Acceptability is part of the

convention of language use; in talking about it, we must always keep in mind

“How acceptable?” and “To whom?”

LANGUAGE AS HUMAN

As noted at the beginning of this chapter, language is a specifically human activity.

That statement, however, raises several questions. When and how did human

beings acquire language? To what extent is language innate, and to what extent is

it learned? How does human language differ from the communication systems of

other creatures? We will look briefly at each of these questions.

Theories of the Origin of Language

The ultimate origin of language is a matter of speculation since we have no real infor-

mation about it. The earliest languages for which we have records are already in a

high stage of development, and the same is true of languages spoken by technologi-

cally primitive peoples. The problem of how language began has tantalized philo-

sophical minds, and many theories have been advanced, to which waggish scholars

have given such fanciful names as the pooh-pooh theory, the bow-wow theory, the

ding-dong theory, and the yo-he-ho theory. The nicknames indicate how seriously

the theories need be taken: they are based, respectively, on the notions that language

was in the beginning ejaculatory, or echoic (onomatopoeic), or characterized by a

mystic appropriateness of sound to sense in contrast to being merely imitative, or

made up of grunts and groans emitted in the course of group actions.

According to one theory, the early prelanguage of human beings was a mixture

of gestures and sounds in which the gestures carried most of the meaning and the

sounds were used chiefly to “punctuate” or amplify the gestures—just the reverse of

our use of speech and hand signals. Eventually human physiology and behavior

changed in several related ways. The human brain, which had been expanding in

size, lateralized—that is, each half came to specialize in certain activities, and

language ability was localized in the left hemisphere of most persons. As a conse-

quence, “handedness” developed (right-handedness for those with left-hemisphere

dominance), and there was greater manual specialization. As people had more

things to do with their hands, they could use them less for communication and

had to rely more on sounds. Therefore, increasingly complex forms of oral signals

developed, and language as we know it evolved. The fact that we human beings

alone have vocal language but share with our closest animal kin (the apes) an abil-

ity to learn complex gesture systems suggests that manual signs may have preceded

language as a form of communication.

We cannot know how language really began; we can be sure only of its

immense antiquity. However human beings started to talk, they did so long ago,

and it was not until much later that they devised a system of making marks on

wood, stone, or clay to represent what they said. Compared with language, writing

is a newfangled invention, although certainly not less brilliant for being so.

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Innate Language Ability

The acquisition of language would seem to be an arduous task. But it is a task that

children all over the world seem not to mind in the least. Moreover, children in

daily contact with a language other than their “home” language—that of their

parents—readily learn to speak the other language with a native accent. After child-

hood, however, perhaps in the teen years, most people find it difficult to learn a

new language. Young children seem to be genetically equipped with an ability to

acquire language. But after a while, that automatic ability atrophies, and learning

a new language becomes a chore.

To be sure, children of five or so have not acquired all of the words or gram-

matical constructions they will need as they grow up. But they have mastered the

basics of the language they will speak for the rest of their lives. The immensity of

that accomplishment can be appreciated by anyone who has learned a second

language as an adult. It is clear that, although every particular language has to be

learned, the ability to acquire and use language is a part of our genetic inheritance

and operates most efficiently in our younger years.

Do Birds and Beasts Really Talk?

Some animals are physically just about as well equipped as humans to produce

speech sounds, and some—certain birds, for instance—have in fact been taught to

do so. But no other species makes use of a system of sounds even remotely resem-

bling ours. Human language and animal communication are fundamentally

different.

In the second half of the twentieth century, a trio of chimpanzees—Sarah, Lana,

and Washoe—greatly modified our ideas about the linguistic abilities of our closest

relatives in the animal kingdom. After several efforts to teach chimps to talk had

ended in almost total failure, it was generally concluded that apes lack the cognitive

ability to learn language. Some psychologists reasoned, however, that the main prob-

lem might be a simple anatomical limitation: human vocal organs are so different

from the corresponding ones in apes that the animals cannot produce the sounds of

human speech. If they have the mental, but not the physical, ability to talk, then they

should be able to learn a language using a medium other than sound.

Sarah was taught to communicate by arranging plastic tokens of arbitrary color

and shape. Each of the tokens, which were metal-backed and placed on a magne-

tized board, represented a word in the system, and groups of tokens corresponded

to sentences. Sarah learned over a hundred tokens and could manage sentences of

the complexity of “Sarah take banana if-then Mary no give chocolate Sarah” (that

is, ‘If Sarah takes a banana, Mary won’t give Sarah any chocolate’). Lana also used

word symbols, but hers were on a typewriter connected to a computer. She commu-

nicated with people, and they with her via the computer. Typed-out messages

appeared on a screen and had to conform exactly to the rules of “word” order of

the system Lana had been taught, if she was to get what she asked for (food, drink,

companionship, and the like).

Washoe, in the most interesting of these efforts to teach animals a language,

was schooled in a gesture language used by the deaf, American Sign Language.

language and the english language

15

Her remarkable success in learning to communicate with this quite natural and

adaptable system has resulted in its being taught to a number of other chimpanzees

and gorillas. The apes learn signs, use them appropriately, combine them meaning-

fully, and when occasion requires even invent new signs or combinations. For

example, one of the apes made up the terms “candydrink” and “drinkfruit” to

talk about watermelons.

The linguistic accomplishment of these apes is remarkable; nevertheless, it is

a far cry from the fullness of a human language. The number of signs or tokens

the ape learns, the complexity of the syntax with which those signs are com-

bined, and the breadth of ideas that they represent are all far more restricted

than in any human language. Moreover, human linguistic systems have been

fundamentally shaped by the fact that they are expressed in sound. Vocalness

of language is no mere incidental characteristic but rather is central to the nature

of language. We must still say that only human beings have language in the full

sense of that term.

LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATION

The purpose of language is to communicate, whether with others by talking and

writing or with ourselves by thinking. The relationship of language to thought has

generated a great deal of speculation. At one extreme are those who believe that

language merely clothes thought and that thought is quite independent of the lan-

guage we use to express it. At the other extreme are those who believe that thought

is merely suppressed language and that, when we are thinking, we are just talking

under our breath. The truth is probably somewhere between those two extremes.

Some, though not all, of the mental activities we identify as “thought” are linguistic

in nature. It is certainly true that until we put our ideas into words they are likely to

remain vague, inchoate, and uncertain. We may sometimes feel like the girl who, on

being told to express her thoughts clearly, replied, “How can I know what I think

until I hear what I say.”

If we think—at least some of the time—in language, then presumably the

language we speak must influence the way we think about the world and perhaps

even the way we perceive it. The idea that language has such influence and thus

importance is called the Whorf hypothesis after the linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Efforts have been made to test the hypothesis—for example, by giving to per-

sons who spoke quite different languages a large number of chips, each of a dif-

ferent color. Those tested were told to sort the chips into piles so that each pile

contained chips of similar color. Each person was allowed to make any number

of piles. As might be predicted, the number of piles tended to correspond with

the number of basic color terms in the language spoken by the sorter. In English

we have eleven basic color terms (red, pink, orange, brown, yellow, green, blue,

purple, black, gray, and white), so English speakers tend to sort color chips into

eleven piles. If a language has only six basic color terms (corresponding, say, to

our red, yellow, green, blue, black, and white), speakers of that language tend

to cancel their perception of all other differences and sort color chips into those

six piles. Pink is only a tint or light version of red. But because we have different

basic terms for those two colors, they seem to us to be quite distinct colors; light

16

chapter 1

blue, light green, and light yellow, on the other hand, are just insignificant ver-

sions of the darker colors because we have no basic terms for them. Thus, how

we think about and respond to colors is a function of how our language classifies

them.

Though a relatively trivial matter, color terms illustrate that the way we react

to the world corresponds to the way our language categorizes it. How many of

our other assumptions are reflexes of our language? English, like many other

languages, has historically used masculine forms (such as pronouns) for persons

of either sex, as in “Everyone has to do his best.” Does such masculine language

influence our attitudes toward the equality of the sexes? Because it may, today the

generic use of masculine forms is widely avoided in favor of gender-neutral or

inclusive language.

Another example is that in English every regular sentence has to have a subject

and a verb; so we say things like “It’s raining” and “It’s time to go,” with the word

it serving as subject, even though the meaning of that it is difficult to specify. Does

the linguistic requirement for a subject and verb lead us to expect an actor or agent

in every action, even though some things may happen without anyone making them

happen? The implications of the Whorf hypothesis are far-reaching and of consider-

able philosophical importance, even though no way of confidently testing those

implications seems possible.

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF LANGUAGE

An important aspect of language systems is that they are “open.” That is, a lan-

guage is not a finite set of messages from which the speaker must choose. Instead,

any speaker can use the resources of the language—its vocabulary and grammatical

patterns—to make up new messages, sentences that no one has ever said before.

Because a language is an open system, it can be used to talk about new things.

Bees have a remarkable system of communication, using a sort of “dance” in the

air, in which the patterns of a bee’s flight tell other members of the hive about

food sources. However, all bees can communicate about is a nectar supply—its

direction, distance, and abundance. As a consequence, a bee would make a very

dull conversationalist.

Another aspect of the communicative function of language is that it can be

displaced. That is, we can talk about things not present—about rain when the

weather is dry, about taxes even when they are not being collected, and about a

yeti even if no such creature exists. The characteristic of displacement means that

human beings can abstract, lie, and talk about talk itself. Displaced language is a

vehicle of memory and of imagination. A bee communicates with other bees about

a nectar source only when it has just found such a source. Bees do not celebrate the

delights of nectar by dancing for sheer pleasure. Human beings use language for

many purposes quite unconnected with their immediate environment. Indeed, most

language use is probably thus displaced.

Finally, an important characteristic is that language is not just utilitarian. One of

the uses of language is for entertainment, high and low: for jokes, stories, puzzles,

and poetry. From “knock-knock” jokes to Paradise Lost, speakers delight in

language and in what can be done with it.

language and the english language

17

WHY STUDY THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH?

Language in general is an ability inherent in us. Specific languages such as English are

systems that result from that ability. We can know the underlying ability only

through studying the actual languages that are its expressions. Thus, one of the best

reasons for studying languages is to find out about ourselves, about what makes us

persons. And the best place to start such study is with our own language, the one that

has nurtured our minds and formed our view of the world. A good approach to

studying languages is the historical one. To understand how things are, it is often

helpful and sometimes essential to know how they got to be that way. If we are psy-

chologists who want to understand a person’s behavior, we must know something

about that person’s origins and development. The same is true of a language.

Another reason for studying the history of English is that many of the irregular-

ities in today’s language are the remnants of earlier, quite regular patterns. For

example, the highly irregular plurals of nouns like man-men, mouse-mice, goose-

geese, and ox-oxen can be explained historically. So can the spelling of Modern

English, which may seem chaotic, or at least unruly, to anyone who has had to

struggle with it. The orthographic joke attributed to George Bernard Shaw, that in

English fish might be spelled ghoti (gh as in enough, o as in women, and ti as in

nation), has been repeated often, but the only way to understand the anomalies of

our spelling is to study the history of our language.

The fact that the present-day pronunciation and meaning of cupboard do not

much suggest a board for cups is also something we need history to explain. Why

do we talk about withstanding a thing when we mean that we stand in opposition

to it, rather than in company with it? If people are unkempt, can they also be

kempt, and what does kempt mean? Is something wrong with the position of

secretly in “She wanted to secretly finish writing her novel”? Is there any connec-

tion between heal, whole, healthy, hale, and holy? Knowing about the history of

the language can help us to answer these and many similar questions. Knowledge

of the history of English is no nostrum or panacea for curing all our linguistic ills

(why do we call some medicines by those names?), but it can at least alleviate some

of the symptoms.

Yet another reason for studying the history of English is that it can help us to

understand the literature of earlier times. In his poem “The Eve of St. Agnes,” John

Keats describes the sculptured effigies on the tombs of a chapel on a cold winter

evening:

The sculptur’d dead, on each side, seemed to freeze,

Emprison’d in black, purgatorial rails.

What image should Keats’s description evoke with its reference to rails? Many

a modern reader, taking a cue from the word emprison’d, has thought of the rails

as railings or bars, perhaps a fence around the statues. But rails here is from an Old

English word that meant ‘garments’ and refers to the shrouds or funeral garments

in which the stone figures are clothed. Unless we are aware of such older usage, we

are likely to be led badly astray in the picture we conjure up for these lines.

In the General Prologue to his Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, in describ-

ing an ideal knight, says: “His hors were goode.” Did the knight have one horse or

18

chapter 1

more than one? Hors seems to be singular, but the verb were looks like a plural.

The knight did indeed have several horses; in Chaucer’s day hors was a word, like

deer or sheep, that had a plural identical in form with its singular. It is a small

point, but unless we know what a text means literally, we cannot appreciate it as

literature.

In the remainder of this book, we will be concerned with some of what is

known about the origins and the development of the English language—its sounds,

writing, grammar, vocabulary, and uses through the centuries and around the

world.

FOR FURTHER READING

Full bibliographical information for the works cited is in the selected bibliography, pp. 269–280.

General

Akmajian. Linguistics: An Introduction.

Anderson et al. Glossary of Linguistic Terms.

Cobley. The Routledge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics.

Crystal. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language.

——. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.

——. A Dictionary of Language.

Frawley. International Encyclopedia of Linguistics.

Haspelmath and Naumann. Glottopedia: Discovering Linguistics.

McArthur. The Oxford Companion to the English Language.

Robins. General Linguistics.

The Nature and Origins of Human Language

Aitchison. The Seeds of Speech.

Bickerton. Language & Species.

Carstairs-McCarthy. The Origins of Complex Language.

Corballis. From Hand to Mouth.

Ruhlen. The Origin of Language.

Language Acquisition

Blake. Routes to Child Language.

Bloom. How Children Learn the Meanings of Words.

Clark. First Language Acquisition.

Gleason. The Development of Language.

Karmiloff and Karmiloff-Smith. Pathways to Language.

language and the english language

19

Animal Communication

Ford. The Secret Language of Life.

Morton and Page. Animal Talk.

Language and Thought

Kövecses. Language, Mind, and Culture.

Lee. The Whorf Theory Complex.

Whorf. Language, Thought, and Reality.

±±±±±±±±±±

2

The Sounds of

C H A P T E R

±±±±±±± Current English

Language is basically speech, so sounds are its fundamental building blocks. But we

learn the sounds of our language at such an early age that we are unaware of them

without special study. Moreover, the alphabet we use has always been inadequate

to represent the sounds of the English language, and that is especially true of

Modern English. One letter can represent many different sounds, as a stands for as

many as six different sounds in cat, came, calm, any, call, and was (riming with

fuzz). On the other hand, a single sound can be spelled in various ways, as the “long

a” sound can be spelled a as in baker, ay as in day, ai as in bait, au as in gauge, e as in

mesa, ey as in they, ei as in neighbor, and ea as in great. This is obviously an unsatis-

factory state of affairs.

Phoneticians, who study the sounds used in language, have therefore invented a

phonetic alphabet in which the same symbols consistently represent the same

sounds, thus making it possible to write sounds unambiguously. The phonetic

alphabet uses the familiar Roman letters, but assigns to each a single sound value.

Then, because there are more sounds than twenty-six, some letters have been bor-

rowed from other alphabets, and other letters have been invented, so that finally the

phonetic alphabet has one letter for each sound. To show that the letters of this

phonetic alphabet represent sounds rather than ordinary spellings, they are written

between square brackets, whereas ordinary spellings are italicized (or underlined in

handwriting and typing). Thus so represents the spelling and [so] the pronunciation

of the same word.

Phoneticians describe and classify sounds according to the way they are made.

So to understand the phonetic alphabet and the sounds it represents, you must

know something about how sounds are produced.

THE ORGANS OF SPEECH

The accompanying diagram is a cross section of the head showing the principal

organs of speech. You can use this diagram together with the following discussion

of sounds to locate the places where the sounds are made.

20

the sounds of current english

21

THE ORGANS OF SPEECH

1. Nasal cavity

7. Uvula

13. Epiglottis

2. Lips

8. Tip of tongue

14. Larynx

3. Teeth

9. Front of tongue

15. Vocal cords

4. Alveolar ridge

10. Back of tongue

and glottis

5. Hard palate

11. Oral cavity

16. Trachea

6. Velum

12. Pharynx

17. Esophagus

CONSONANTS OF CURRENT ENGLISH

Consonants are classified according to their place of articulation (that is, where

they are made) as labial (bilabial, labiodental), dental (interdental, alveolar, alveo-

lopalatal), palatovelar (palatal, velar), or glottal. They are also classified by their

manner of articulation (that is, how they are made) as stops, fricatives, affricates,

nasals, liquids, or semivowels. For most consonants, it is also necessary to observe

whether or not they have voice (vibration of the vocal cords). Voice can be heard as

a kind of buzz or hum accompanying the sounds that have it.

The accompanying chart uses these principles of classification to show all the

consonants of present-day English with illustrative words. The chart also includes

a few other consonant symbols (without illustrative words); they represent sounds

treated in later chapters. They are included here only so you can refer to this chart

later.

22

chapter

PLACE OF ARTICULATION

2

LABIAL

DENTAL

PALATOVELAR

GLOTTAL

Bilabial

Labiodental

Interdental

Alveolar

Alveolo-

Palatal

Velar

palatal

voiceless

p (pup), ph

t (tat), th

k (kick), kh

Stops

voiced

b (bub), bh

d (dad), dh

g (gig), gh

voiceless

f (few)

θ (thigh)

s (seal)

š (shun)

ç

x

h (hoe)

Fricatives

voiced

β

v (view)

ð (thy)

z (zeal)

ž (vision)

ˠ

voiceless

č (chug)

Affricates

voiced

ǰ (jug)

Nasals

m (mum)

n (nun)

ŋ (sing)

lateral

l (low)

Liquids

retroflex

r (row)

Semivowels

y (ye)

w (we)

the sounds of current english

23

Stops: The sounds [p], [t], and [k] are voiceless stops (also called plosives or

explosives). They are so called because in making them the flow of the breath is

actually stopped for a split second at some position in the mouth and is then

released by an explosion of air without vibration of the vocal cords. If vibration

or voice is added while making these sounds, the results are the voiced stops [b],

[d], and [g].

When the air is stopped by the two lips, the result is [p] or [b]; hence they are

called, respectively, the voiceless and voiced bilabial stops. Stoppage made by the

tip of the tongue against the gums above the teeth (the alveolar ridge) produces [t]

or [d]; hence these sounds are called, respectively, the voiceless and voiced alveolar

stops. (In other languages, such as Spanish, similar sounds are made with the tip of

the tongue against the upper teeth, producing dental stops.) Stoppage made by the

back of the tongue against the roof of the mouth produces [k] or [g]—respectively

the voiceless and voiced palatovelar stops.

The roof of the mouth is divided into the hard palate (called just palate for

short) and the soft palate (or velum). You can feel these two parts by running the

tip of your tongue back along the roof of the mouth; first, you will feel the hard

bone under the skin, and then the roof will become soft and spongy. Depending

on what vowels they are near, some [k] and [g] sounds are palatal (like those in

geek) and others are velar (like those in gook).

Fricatives: For the sounds called fricatives (or spirants), a narrow opening is

made somewhere in the mouth, so that the air must “rub” (Latin fricare) its way

through instead of exploding through a complete obstruction, as the stops do. The

fricatives of present-day English are four pairs of voiceless and voiced sounds, plus

one that is unpaired voiceless.

Labiodental [f] and [v] are produced with the lower lip against the upper teeth.

Interdental [θ] and [ð] (as in thigh and thy) are produced with the tip of the tongue

between the teeth or just behind the upper teeth. You may find these two sounds

hard to tell apart at first because they are usually spelled alike and are not as

important as some of the other pairs in identifying words. Alveolar [s] and [z] are

made by putting the tip of the tongue near the alveolar ridge. Alveolopalatal [š] and

[ž] (as in the middle sounds of fission and vision) are made by lifting the tip and

front of the tongue toward the alveolar ridge and hard palate. These last four frica-

tives are also grouped together as sibilants (from Latin sibilare ‘to hiss, whistle’)

because they have a hissing effect. The voiceless fricative [h] has very generalized

mouth friction but is called a glottal fricative because when it is said very emphati-

cally, it includes some friction at the vocal cords or glottis.

Affricates: The voiceless and voiced affricates are the initial and final sounds of

church and judge, respectively. They begin very much like the stops [t] and [d]

respectively, but end like the fricatives [š] and [ž]. They function, however, like sin-

gle sounds in English, so the voiceless affricate is written [č] and the voiced affricate

is written [ǰ]. The little check mark written above the letters s, z, c, and j in these

phonetic symbols is a haček, pronounced “hah-check.” It is a word from the Czech

language meaning ‘little hook.’

Nasals: Consonants produced by blocking the mouth and letting the air flow

instead through the nose are called nasals. They include the bilabial [m], with lips

completely closed; the alveolar [n], with stoppage made at the gum line; and the

24

chapter 2

palatovelar [ŋ] (as at the end of sing and sung), with stoppage made at the palate or

velum.

Liquids: The sounds [l] and [r] are called liquids. They are both made with the

tip of the tongue in the vicinity of the alveolar ridge. The liquid [l] is called a lateral

because the breath flows around the sides of the tongue in making it. The usual

term for [r], retroflex ‘bent back,’ refers to the position sometimes assumed by the

tongue in its articulation. The similarity in the articulation of [r] and [l] is indicated

by their historical alternation, as in Mary/Molly, Sarah/Sally, Katherine/Kathleen,

and two related words for ‘star’: Old English steorra and Latin stella. Another

example is Classical Latin peregrinus ‘foreigner,’ which became pelegrinus in Late

Latin, from which came Anglo-French pilegrin and Middle English pilgrim.

Dissimilation (30) may have been an additional factor there, as also in belfry from

Middle English berfrey, which was originally unconnected with bells, but rather

denoted ‘a (siege) tower,’ though folk etymology (241) was doubtless involved as

well because church towers contained bells.

There is no single pronunciation of English sounds, which vary greatly from

one dialect to another. The liquid [r] is particularly unstable. In eastern New

England, New York City, the coastal South, and the prestigious British accent

called RP (received pronunciation), [r] disappears from pronunciation unless it is

followed by a vowel. So in those areas r is silent in farm, “far distances,” and

“The distance is far,” but is pronounced in faring. In the same areas (except the

American South), an [r] at the end of a word is pronounced if the next word begins

with a vowel, as in “there is” and “far away.” This [r] is called linking r. It is not

used in the American South, where sometimes [r] is lost even between vowels within

a word, as in very pronounced as “ve’y” and Carolina as “Ca’olina.” Other varie-

ties of American English—and many varieties of British English—preserve the [r]

sound under most conditions.

Failure to understand that [r] is lacking before a consonant or in final position

in standard British speech has led to American misinterpretation of such British

spellings as ’arf (for Cockney half, pronounced “ahf”), cokernut (for coconut),

and Eeyore, Christopher Robin’s donkey companion. Eeyore, which A. A. Milne,

the creator of Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh, could just as well have

spelled Eeyaw, is what [h]-less Cockney donkeys presumably say instead of hee-

haw. Similarly, the New England loss of [r] motivates the spelling Marmee of

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a spelling that represents the same pronuncia-

tion most Americans would spell as mommy.

Linking r gives rise by analogy to an unhistorical [r] sound called intrusive r.

Those who say “Have no fea(r)” without an [r] but “the fear of it” with [r] are

likely also to say “Have no idea” and “the idear of it.” This intrusive r is common

in the speech of eastern New England, New York City, and British RP, as in “law(r)

enforcement” and “Cuba(r) is an island.” Because the American South has no link-

ing r, it also has no intrusive r.

Semivowels: Because of their vocalic quality, [y] and [w] are called semivowels.

They are indeed like vowels in the way they are made, the palatal semivowel [y]

being like the vowels of eat or it, and the velar semivowel [w] like the vowels of

oodles or oomph. But in words they function like consonants.

the sounds of current english

25

VOWELS OF CURRENT ENGLISH

Vowels are the principal sounds of syllables. In the accompanying chart, the vowels

are shown according to the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth

(high, mid, low) and to the position of the highest part of the tongue (front, central,

back). The chart may be taken to represent a cross section of the oral cavity, facing

left. Vowel symbols with keywords are those of present-day American English.

Those without keywords represent less common vowels or those of older periods

of the language; they are explained and illustrated below or in later chapters.

FRONT

CENTRAL

BACK

i (peat) ü

ɨ

u (pooh)

HIGH

ɪ (pit) 

ʊ (put)

e (pate)

ə (putt, pert,

o (Poe)

MID

sofa, motor)

ɵ

ɛ (pet)

ɔ (paw)

æ:

ɒ

LOW

æ (pat)

a

ɑ (pot)

Some of the vowel symbols, especially [i], [e], and [ɑ], do not represent the

sounds those letters usually have in current English spelling. Instead, those phonetic

symbols represent sounds like those the letters stand for in Spanish, French, Italian,

and German. Thus in transcribing Modern English words, we use [i] for the sound

that is written i in other languages, although the sound [i] is most frequently written

e, ee, ea, ie, or ei in Modern English, except in words recently borrowed from those

other languages (for example, police). Similarly, we use [e] for the sound usually

written a (followed by a consonant plus “silent e”) or ai in Modern English (as in

bate, bait). We use the symbol [ɑ] for “broad a,” which often occurs in the spelling

of English words before r and lm (as in far and calm); in father, mama, papa, and a

few other words like spa; and in certain types of American English after w (as in

watch). The most usual spelling of the sound [ɑ] in American English is, however,

o, as in pot and top.

Of the vowels listed in the chart, [i], [ɪ], [e], [ɛ], and [æ] are called front vowels

because of the positions assumed by the tongue in their articulation, and [u], [ʊ], [o],

[ɔ], and [ɑ] are called back vowels for the same reason. Both series have been given in

descending order, that is, in relation to the height of the tongue as indicated by the

downward movement of the lower jaw in their articulation: thus [i] is the highest

front vowel and [æ] the lowest, as [u] is the highest back vowel and [ɑ] is the lowest.

All of these back vowels except [ɑ] are pronounced with some degree of rounding and

protrusion of the lips and hence are called rounded vowels. Vowels without lip round-

ing (all of the others in Modern English) are called unrounded or spread vowels.

The symbol [ǝ], called schwa, represents the mid and central stressed vowels of

cut and curt as well as the unstressed vowels in the second syllables of tuba and

lunar. Those four vowels are acoustically distinct from one another, but differences

26

chapter 2

between them do not serve to distinguish one English word from another, so we

can use the same symbol for all four sounds: [kǝt], [kǝrt], [tubǝ], and [lunǝr].

Some dialects of American English use a few other vowels: [a], [æ:], [ɨ], [ɵ], and [ɒ].

The vowel [a] is heard in eastern New England speech in ask, half, laugh, and

path and in some varieties of Southern speech in bye, might, tired, and the like. It is

intermediate between [ɑ] and [æ], and is usually the first element of a diphthong

(that is, a two-vowel sequence pronounced as the core of a single syllable) in right

and rout, which we write, respectively, as [aɪ] and [aʊ].

Along the East Coast roughly between New York City and Philadelphia as well

as in a number of other metropolitan centers, some speakers use clearly different

vowels in cap and cab, bat and bad, lack and lag. In the first word of these and

many other such pairs, they pronounce the sound represented by [æ]; but in the sec-

ond word, they use a higher, tenser, and longer vowel that we may represent as

[æ:]. Some speakers also use these two vowels to distinguish have from halve and

can ‘be able’ from can ‘preserve in tins.’

Some Americans pronounce the adverb just (as in “They’ve just left”) with a

vowel, namely [ɨ], which is different from that in the adjective (as in “a just person”),

which has [ǝ]. It is likewise different from the vowels in gist (with [ɪ]) and jest (with

[ɛ]). This vowel may also appear in children, would, and various other words.

In eastern New England, some speakers, especially of the older generation, use

a vowel in whole that differs from the one in hole. This New England short o is

symbolized by [ɵ] and is found also in road, stone, and other words. It is rare and

is becoming more so.

British English has a lightly rounded vowel symbolized by [ɒ] in pot, top, rod,

con, and other words in which Americans use the sound [ɑ] for the spelling o. This

vowel also occurs in some American dialects.

If you do not use these vowel sounds, obviously you do not need their symbols to

represent your speech. It is wise, however, to remember that even in English there are

sounds that you do not use yourself or that you use differently from others.

An increasingly large number of Americans do not distinguish between [ɔ] and

[ɑ]. For them, caught and cot are homophones, as are taught and tot, dawn and

don, gaud and God, pawed and pod. They pronounce all such words with either

[ɔ] or [ɑ] or with a vowel that is intermediate between those two, namely the [ɒ]

mentioned above.

Other Americans lack a phonemic contrast between two sounds only in a par-

ticular environment. For example, in the South, the vowels [ɪ] and [ɛ], although dis-

tinguished in most environments (such as pit and pet), have merged before nasals.

Thus pin and pen are homophones for many Southerners, as are tin and ten, Jim

and gem, and ping and the first syllable of penguin. The sound used in the nasal

environment is usually [ɪ], though before [ŋ] it may approach [i].

Vowels can be classified not only by their height and their frontness (as in the

vowel chart), but also by their tenseness. A tense vowel is typically longer in dura-

tion than the closest lax vowel and also higher and less central (that is, further front

if it is a front vowel and further back if a back one). Tense vowels are [i], [e], [u], and

[o]; the corresponding lax vowels for the first three are [ɪ], [ɛ], and [ʊ]. The “New

England short o” is a lax vowel corresponding to tense [o]. For most Americans,

the low and the central vowels do not enter into a tense-lax contrast. However, for

the sounds of current english

27

those who have it, [æ:] (in cab, halve, bag) is tense, and the corresponding [æ] (in

cap, have, back) is lax. Similarly, in standard British English, [ɔ] (in caught, dawn,

wars) is tense, and the corresponding [ɒ] (in cot, don, was) is lax. In earlier times

(as we shall see in Chapters 5 and 6), English vowels were either long or short in

duration; today that difference has generally become one of tenseness.

In most types of current English, vowel length is hardly ever a distinguishing

factor. When we talk about “long a,” as in the first paragraph of this chapter, we

are really talking about a difference of vowel quality, namely [e] usually spelled

with the letter a (as in fade or raid), as distinguished from another vowel quality,

namely [æ] also spelled with the same letter a (as in fad). But phonetically speaking,

vowel length is just that—a difference in how long a vowel is held during its pro-

nunciation—and any difference of vowel quality is incidental.

In current English, the length of vowels is determined primarily by neighboring

sounds. For example, we distinguish bad from bat, bag from back, and lab from lap

by the final consonants in those words, not by the longer vowel in the first of each

pair. We tend to hold a vowel longer before a voiced consonant than before a

voiceless one (as in bad versus bat), but that difference is secondary to and depen-

dent on the voiced d versus the voiceless t.

Some speakers, as noted above, distinguish can ‘preserve in tins’ from can ‘be

able,’ halve from have, and similarly balm from bomb and vary from very. They do

so by pronouncing the vowel of the first word in each pair longer than that of the

second word—but also tenser and with some difference in quality. In southeastern

American English, bulb (with no [l]) may also be distinguished from bub by vowel

length, and similarly burred (with no [r]) from bud, and stirred (with no [r]) from

stud. In r-less speech, when [ɑ] occurs before etymological r, length may likewise be

a distinguishing factor, as in part [pɑ:t] and pot [pɑt]. In phonetic transcriptions, a

colon is used to indicate vowel length when it is necessary to do so. Such distinc-

tions need not concern most of us except in Old, Middle, and early Modern

English, which had phonemically distinctive vowel quantity.

A diphthong is a sequence of two vowels in the same syllable, as opposed to a

monophthong, which is a single, simple vowel. Many English vowel sounds tend to

have diphthongal pronunciation, most notably [e] and [o], as in bay and toe, which

are usually pronounced in a way that might be written [eɪ] and [oʊ] if we wanted to

record the secondary vowel. Normally, however, there is no need to do so. In parts

of the United States, most vowels are sometimes diphthongized; thus, bed may have

a centralized off-glide (or secondary vowel): [bɛǝd]. In keeping with our practice of

writing only sounds that affect meaning, however, we will ignore all such diphthon-

gal glides, writing as diphthongs only [aɪ] and [aʊ] in my and now and [ɔɪ] in joy

and coin. Words like few and cube may be pronounced with a semivowel before the

vowel, [fyu] and [kyub], or with a diphthong, [fɪu] and [kɪub]. The first pronuncia-

tion is more common.

In all three of the diphthongs [aɪ], [aʊ], and [ɔɪ], the tongue moves from the posi-

tion for the first vowel to that for the second, and the direction of movement is more

important than the exact starting and ending points. Consequently, the diphthongs we

write [aɪ] and [aʊ] may actually begin with vowels that are more like [ɑ], [æ], or even

[ǝ]. Similarly, [ɔɪ] may begin with [ɒ] or [o] as well as with [ɔ]. The ending points are

equally variable. The off-glide in [aɪ] and [ɔɪ] may actually be as high as [i] or as low

28

chapter 2

as [ɛ] (and for [aɪ] the off-glide may disappear altogether, especially in parts of the

South, being replaced by a lengthening of the first vowel, [a:]); similarly, the off-glide

in [aʊ] may be as high as [u] or as low as [o]. Thus it is best to understand [aɪ] as a

symbol for a diphthong that begins with a relatively low unrounded vowel and moves

toward a higher front position, [aʊ] as representing a diphthong that begins the same

way but moves toward a higher back rounded position, and [ɔɪ] as representing a

diphthong that begins with a mid or low back rounded vowel and moves toward a

higher unrounded front position. In a more detailed transcription, these differences

could be represented, for example, in the word white as [ɑɛ], [a:], [ǝi], or various

other possibilities. If we are interested in less detail, however, we can write [aɪ] and

understand that digraph as representing whatever sound we use in words like white.

Vowels Before [r]

The sound [r] modifies the quality of a vowel that comes before it. Consequently,

vowels before [r] are somewhat different from the same vowels in other environ-

ments. We have already noted that [ǝ] before [r], as in curt or burst, is different

from [ǝ] in any other position, as in cut or bust. Similarly, the [o] in mourn is not

quite the same as that in moan, nor is the [ɑ] in farther quite the same as that in

father. Such differences can be ignored, however, if we are interested only in writing

differences of sound that are capable of making a difference in meaning.

Fewer distinctive vowels occur before [r] than elsewhere. In particular, for many

speakers tenseness is not distinctive before [r]. Thus nearer and mirror may rime, with

a vowel in the first syllables that is close to either [i] or [ɪ]. Similarly, fairy and ferry

may be identical, with either [e] or [ɛ], and touring and during may rime, with either

[u] or [ʊ]. In all these variations, the lax vowel occurs more frequently. For most

Americans nowadays, hoarse and horse are homophones. In their traditional pronun-

ciation, hoarse has [o] (or [ɔ]) whereas horse has [ɔ] (or [ɒ]); the same difference of

vowels was once made by most speakers in mourning and morning, borne and born,

four and for, oar and or, and many other words. Today, for many speakers, these

vowels have merged before [r], and as a result some people misspell foreword as for-

ward because they pronounce the two words alike.

In some American speech, especially that of the lower Mississippi Valley and

the West, there is no difference in pronunciation between form and farm, or and

are, born and barn, or lord and lard. Some persons have [ɑ], some [ɔ], and others

[ɒ] in all such words. There is much variation among speakers from various regions

in the vowels they use before [r].

When [r] follows a vowel in the same syllable, a schwa glide may intrude, as in

near [nɪr] or [niǝr]. The schwa glide is especially likely when the sentence stress and

consequently a change of pitch fall on the syllable, as in “The time drew néar” with

the glide versus “The time dréw near” without it.

STRESS

The most prominent syllable in a word has primary stress, indicated by a raised ver-

tical mark at the beginning of the syllable in phonetic transcription or an acute

accent mark over the appropriate vowel symbol in normal orthography: [ˈsofǝ] or

the sounds of current english

29

sófa, [ǝˈbaʊt] or abóut. For syllables bearing secondary stress, a lowered vertical

mark is used in phonetic transcription and a grave accent mark in normal orthogra-

phy: [ˈɛmǝˈnet] or émanàte. Unstressed syllables (which are sometimes said to carry

“weak stress”) are not marked in any way.

Unstressed Vowels

Although any vowel can be pronounced without stress, three are frequently so used:

[i], [ɪ], and [ǝ]. There is a great deal of variation between [i] and [ɪ] in final position

(as in lucky, happy, city, and seedy) and before another vowel (as in the second syl-

lables of various, curiosity, oriel, and carrion). Old-fashioned pronunciation along

the East Coast uses [ɪ] in these positions, but the most common pronunciation in

the United States is [i].

There is also a great deal of variation between [ǝ] and [ɪ] before a consonant. In

the traditional pronunciation still used in British English and in some regions of the

United States, [ɪ] occurs in the final unstressed syllable of words like bucket and

college, and in the initial unstressed syllable of words like elude and illumine.

Increasingly, however, large numbers of Americans use either [ǝ] or [ɪ] variably in

such words, depending in part on the surrounding sounds, though with a strong

preference for [ǝ]. A rule of pronunciation seems to be emerging that favors

unstressed [ɪ] only before velar consonants (as in the first syllable of ignore and

the final syllable of comic or hoping) and [ǝ] elsewhere. Thus, whereas the older

pronunciation has [ǝ] in the second syllable of stomach and [ɪ] in the first syllable

of mysterious, many speakers now reverse those vowels in the two words, ending

stomach like comic and beginning mysterious like mosquito.

KINDS OF SOUND CHANGE

English words, as already observed, vary in their pronunciation, in part because

sounds do not always change in the same way among different groups. Thus at one

time all speakers of English distinguished the members of pairs like horse–hoarse,

morning–mourning, and for–four. Nowadays most probably do not. Because this

change has not proceeded uniformly, the pronunciation of such words now varies.

Some changes of sound are very important and highly systematic. Two such

changes, called the First Sound Shift and the Great Vowel Shift, are dealt with in

Chapters 4 and 7 respectively. Other changes are more incidental but fall into several

distinct categories. In this section we examine some of the latter kind, especially

changes in informal and in nonstandard speech.

Assimilation: Sounds Become More Alike

Assimilation is a change that makes one sound more like another near it. If pancake

is pronounced carefully, as its parts are when they are independent words, it is

[pæn kek]. However, [n] is an alveolar sound, whereas [k] is palatovelar; conse-

quently, speakers often anticipate the place of articulation of the [k] and pronounce

the word [pæŋ kek] with a palatovelar nasal. In addition to such partial assimila-

tion, by which sounds become more alike while remaining distinct, assimilation

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chapter 2

may be total. That is, the sounds become completely identical, as when spaceship

changes in pronunciation from [spes šɪp] to [speš šɪp]. In such cases it is usual for

the identical sounds to combine by the omission of one of them, as in [spešɪp]. A

much older example is cupboard, in which the medial [pb] has become a single [b].

In speech with a moderately fast tempo, assimilation is very common. Thus, a

slow pronunciation of “What is your name?” as [wǝt ɪz yʊr nem] in faster tempo

may become [wǝts yǝr nem], and in very fast tempo [wǝčǝr nem], the latter two sug-

gested by the spellings “What’s yer name?” and “Whacher name?” The last also

shows a particular kind of assimilation called palatalization. In the sequence [tsy]

of “What’s yer name?” the alveolar fricative [s] is assimilated to the following pala-

tal semivowel [y], and the result is a palatalized [š], which combines with the pre-

ceding [t] to make the alveolopalatal affricate [č] of “Whacher name?” Such

pronunciations, unlike the impressionistic spellings that represent them, are not

careless or sloppy (much less substandard) but merely variants we use in speech

that is rapid and informal. If we never used such assimilated forms in talking, we

would sound very stilted indeed.

Dissimilation: Sounds Become Less Alike

The opposite of assimilation is dissimilation, a process by which neighboring

sounds become less like one another. In the word diphthong, the sequence of two

voiceless fricatives [fθ], represented by the medial phth, requires an effort to say.

Consequently, many speakers pronounce the word with medial [pθ], replacing fric-

ative [f] with stop [p], as though the word were spelled dipthong. And consequently

some people do indeed misspell the word that way.

Another example of dissimilation is the substandard pronunciation of chimney as

chimley, with the second of two nasals changed to an [l]. The ultimate dissimilation is

the complete loss of one sound because of its proximity to another similar sound. A fre-

quent example in present-day standard English is the omission of one of two [r] sounds

from words like cate(r)pillar, Cante(r)bury, rese(r)voir, terrest(r)ial, southe(r)ner, bar-

bitu(r)ate, gove(r)nor, and su(r)prised.

Elision: Sounds Are Omitted

The sentence used as an example of assimilation (“What’s your name?”) also exem-

plifies another kind of sound change: loss of sounds (elision) due to lack of stress.

The verb is usually has no stress and thus often contracts with a preceding word by

the elision of its vowel. A sound omitted by elision is said to be elided.

An initial unstressed vowel is also lost when about is pronounced ’bout in a pro-

cess known as aphesis. It is a specialized variety of a more general process, apheresis,

which is the loss of any sounds (not just an unstressed vowel) from the beginning of a

word, as in the pronunciation of almost in “’Most everybody knows that.” Loss of

sounds from the end of a word is known as apocope, as in the pronunciation of child

as chile. A common type of elision in present-day English is syncope—loss of a

weakly stressed syllable from the middle of a word, as in the pronunciation of family

as fam’ly. Indeed, many words sound artificial when they are given a full, unsynco-

pated pronunciation. Like assimilation, syncope is a normal process.

the sounds of current english

31

Intrusion: Sounds Are Added

The opposite of elision is the intrusion of sounds. An intrusive [ǝ] sometimes pops

up between consonants—for instance, between [l] and [m] in elm or film, between

[n] and [r] in Henry, between [r] and [m] in alarm (as in the archaic variant ala-

rum), between [s] and [m] in Smyrna (in the usual local pronunciation of New

Smyrna Beach, Florida), between [θ] and the second [r] in arthritis, and between

[θ] and [l] in athlete. A term for this phenomenon is svarabhakti (from Sanskrit),

and such a vowel is called a svarabhakti vowel. If, however, you do not care to

use so flamboyant a word, you can always fall back on epenthesis (epenthetic) or

anaptyxis (anaptyctic). Perhaps it is just as well to call it an intrusive schwa.

Consonants may also be intrusive. A [p] may be inserted in warmth, so that it

sounds as if spelled warmpth; a [t] may be inserted in sense, so it is homophonous

with cents; and a [k] may be inserted in length, so that it sounds as if spelled lenkth.

These three words end in a nasal [m, n, ŋ] plus a voiceless fricative [θ, s]; between

the nasal and the fricative, many speakers intrude a stop [p, t, k] that is voiceless

like the fricative but has the same place of articulation as the nasal. That is, the

stop is homorganic in place with the nasal and in voicing with the fricative. There

is a simple physiological explanation for such intrusion. To move directly from

nasal to voiceless fricative, it is necessary simultaneously to release the oral stop-

page and to cease the vibration of vocal cords. If those two vocal activities are not

perfectly synchronized, the effect will be to create a new sound between the two

original ones. In these examples, the vocal vibration ceases an instant before the

stoppage is released, and consequently a voiceless stop is created.

Metathesis: Sounds Are Reordered

The order of sounds can be reversed by a process called metathesis. Tax and task

are historically developments of a single form, with the [ks] (represented in spelling

by x) metathesized in the second word to [sk]—tax, after all, is a task all of us must

meet. In present-day English, [r] frequently metathesizes with an unstressed vowel;

thus the initial [prǝ] of produce may become [pǝr] and the opposite reordering can

be heard in perform when pronounced [prǝfɔrm]. The television personality Oprah

was originally named Orpah, after one of the two daughters-in-law of the Biblical

Naomi (Ruth 1.4), but the rp got metathesized to pr, producing the well-known

name. The metathesis of a sound and a syllable boundary in the word another

leads to the reinterpretation of original an other as a nother, especially in the

expression “a whole nother thing.”

CAUSES OF SOUND CHANGE

The cause of a sound change is often unknown. Two of the major changes already

alluded to, namely the First Sound Shift and the Great Vowel Shift, are particularly

mysterious. Various causes have been suggested—for example, that when people

speaking different languages come into contact, one group learns the other’s lan-

guage but does so imperfectly, and thus carries over native habits of pronunciation

into the newly acquired language. This explanation is known as the substratum or

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chapter 2

superstratum theory (depending on whether it is the language of the dominant

group or that of the dominated group that is influenced).

A quite different sort of explanation is that languages tend to develop a balanced

sound system—that is, to make sounds as different from one another as possible by

distributing them evenly in phonological space. Thus, it is common for languages to

have two front vowels [i, e] and three back ones [u, o, ɑ]. It would be very strange if

a language had five front vowels and no back ones at all, because such an unbal-

anced system would make poor use of its available resources. If, for some reason, a

language loses some of its sounds—say, its high vowels—a pressure inside the system

may fill the gap by making mid vowels higher in their articulation.

Other changes, such as assimilation, dissimilation, elision, and intrusion, are

often explained as increasing the ease of articulation: some sounds can be pro-

nounced together more smoothly if they are alike, others if they are different.

Elision and assimilation both quicken the rate of speech, so talking at “fast”

tempo (although more than speed is implied by tempo) would encourage both

those processes. Intrusion can also help to make articulation easier. It and metathe-

sis may result from our brains working faster than our vocal organs; consequently

the nerve impulses that direct the movement of those organs sometimes get out of

sync, resulting in slips of the tongue.

In addition to such mechanical explanations, some sound changes imply at least

partial awareness by the speaker. Remodeling chaise longue as chaise lounge because

one uses it for lounging is folk etymology (241). Pronouncing comptroller (originally

a fancy, and mistaken, spelling for controller) with internal [mptr] is a spelling pro-

nunciation (46-7). These are matters considered in more detail later.

Hypercorrection results from an effort to “improve” one’s speech on the basis of

too little information. For example, having been told that it is incorrect to “drop your

g’s” as in talkin’ and somethin’, the earnest but ill-informed self-improver has been

known to “correct” chicken to chicking and Virgin Islands to Virging Islands.

Similarly, one impressed with the elegance of a Bostonian or British pronunciation

of aunt and can’t as something like “ahnt” and “cahnt” may be misled into talking

about how dogs “pahnt,” a pronunciation of pant that will amuse any proper

Bostonian or Briton. Speakers have a natural tendency to generalize rules—to apply

them in as many circumstances as possible—so in learning a new rule, we must also

learn the limitations on its use. Another example of such overgeneralization is the fric-

ative [ž]. Although it is the most recent and rarest of English consonants, it seems to

have acquired associations of exotic elegance and is now often used in words where it

does not belong historically—for example, in rajah, cashmere, and kosher.

As speakers use the language, they often change it, whether unconsciously or

deliberately. Those changes become for the next generation just a part of the inher-

ited system, available to use or again to change. And so a language varies over time

and may, like English, eventually become quite different from its earlier system.

THE PHONEME

At the beginning of this chapter, some sounds were called the “same,” and others

“different.” However, what are regarded as the same sounds vary from language to

language. In English, for instance, the vowel sound of sit and the vowel sound of seat

the sounds of current english

33

are distinctive, and all native speakers regard them as different. Many pairs of words,

called contrastive pairs, differ solely in the distinctive quality that these sounds have

for us: bit-beat, mill-meal, fist-feast, and lick-leak are a few such pairs. But in Spanish

this difference, so important in English, is of no significance at all; there are no such

contrastive pairs, and hence the two vowels in question are not distinctive Spanish

sounds. Native speakers of Spanish may have difficulty hearing the difference between

seat and sit—a difference that is clear to native English speakers.

What in any language is regarded as the “same sound” is actually a class of

similar sounds that make up what is called a phoneme. A phoneme is the smallest

distinctive unit of speech. It consists of a number of allophones, that is, similar

sounds that are not distinctive in that language.

Speakers of English regard the two sounds spelled t in tone and stone as the same.

Acoustically, they are quite different. In tone the initial consonant has aspiration [th];

that is, it is followed by a breath puff, which you can clearly feel if you hold your hand

before your lips while saying the word, whereas in stone this aspiration is lacking.

These two different sounds both belong to, or are allophones of, the English t pho-

neme. In these words, the allophones occur in complementary distribution: that is to

say, each has a different environment. The unaspirated t occurs only after s, a position

that the aspirated sound never occupies, so there is no overlapping of the two allo-

phones. In other positions, such as at the end of a word like fight, aspirated and unas-

pirated t are in free variation: either may occur, depending on the style of speaking.

In English the presence or absence of aspiration is nondistinctive. But it is dis-

tinctive or phonemic in other languages, such as Chinese and Classical Greek.

Ancient Greek had different letters for these sounds—θ for aspirated t and τ for

unaspirated t—and the Greeks carefully differentiated them.

There are other allophones of the phoneme written t. For instance, in American

English the t sound that appears medially in words like iota, little, and matter is

made by flapping the tongue and sounds very like a [d]; [t] and [d] in that position

may even have become identical, so that atom and Adam or latter and ladder are

pronounced alike. In a certain type of New York City speech, words like bottle

have a glottal stop [ʔ], that is, a “catch” in the throat, instead of a [t]. In a word

like outcome, the [t] may be unreleased: we pronounce the first part of the t and

then go directly to the k sound that begins come.

It is usual to write phonemes within slanting lines, or virgules (also called

slashes), thus /t/. This book, however, uses a phonetic broad transcription enclosed

in square brackets, showing only the particular characteristics of speech we are

interested in and for the most part ignoring allophonic features such as the aspira-

tion of /t/ just described. Allophonic detail can be recorded in a narrow transcrip-

tion, using special symbols such as [th] for the t of tone and [ɾ] for the t of iota.

Such detail is necessary, however, only for special purposes. Phonetic broad tran-

scriptions of speech are, in effect, phonemic.

DIFFERING TRANSCRIPTIONS

The set of symbols we use to represent sounds depends on factors like convenience

and familiarity, but it is essentially arbitrary. Dictionaries tend to use symbols

closely aligned with conventional English spelling, although each dictionary makes

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chapter 2

its own alignment. This book uses a variant of the International Phonetic Alphabet

(used for writing sounds in any language), adapted in certain ways by American

dialectologists and linguists. Here is a list of some symbols used in this book, with

variants you may find elsewhere:

ð

đ

this

i

iy, i:

peat

o

ow, oυ, o:, ǝʊ

so

ŝ ∫

shun

ɪ

i, ɩ

pit

ǝ

ʌ

putt

ž ʒ

vision

e

ey, eɪ , eι, e: pate

ǝr ɝ, ɚ

pert

č tš, t∫ chin

ɛ e

pet

aɪ ay, aɩ

by

ǰ dž, ʤ jug

u

uw, u:

fool

aʊ aw, aυ

bough

y

j

yes

ʊ u, ɷ, υ

full

ɔɪ ɔy, ɔι

boy

Such differences in transcription are matters partly of theory and partly of style,

rather than substantial disagreements about the sounds being transcribed. You need

to be aware of their existence, so that if you encounter different methods of transcrib-

ing, you will not suppose that different sounds are necessarily represented. The rea-

sons for the differences belong to a more detailed study than is appropriate here.

FOR FURTHER READING

General

McMahon. An Introduction to English Phonology.

Pullum and Ladusaw. Phonetic Symbol Guide.

Roach. English Phonetics and Phonology.

Wells. Accents of English.

Widmayer and Gray. Sounds of English.

American Pronunciation

Kenyon. American Pronunciation.

Labov et al. Atlas of North American English.

British Pronunciation

Gimson. Gimson’s Pronunciation.

Pronouncing Dictionaries

Jones. English Pronouncing Dictionary.

Upton, Kretzschmar, and Konopka. The Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation.

Wells. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary.

±±±±±±±±±±

Letters and Sounds

±±

3

± C H A P T E R

±±±±±

A Brief History of Writing

Although talking is as old as humanity, writing is a product of comparatively recent

times. With it, history begins; without it, we must depend on the archeologist. The

entire period during which people have been making conventionalized markings on

stone, wood, clay, metal, parchment, paper, or other surfaces to represent their

speech is really no more than a moment in the vast period during which they have

been combining vocal noises systematically for the purpose of communicating with

each other.

IDEOGRAPHIC AND SYLLABIC WRITING

Writing almost certainly evolved from the wordless comic-strip type of drawing of

early cultures. The American Indians made many such drawings, using particular

conventions to represent ideas. For example, horizontal lines on a chief’s gravestone

indicated the number of his campaigns, and vertical lines indicated the number of

wounds he received in those campaigns (Pedersen 143). The lines rising from an

eagle’s head indicated that the figure was the chief of the eagle totem, as in a “letter”

from that chief to the president of the United States, who is represented as a white-

faced man in a white house (Gelb 2). But such drawings, communicative as they may

be once one understands their conventions, give no idea of actual words. Any identity

of wording in two interpretations of the same drawing would be purely coincidental.

No element even remotely suggests speech sounds or word order; hence such draw-

ings tell us nothing about the language of those who made them.

When symbols come to stand for ideas corresponding to individual words

and each word is represented by a separate symbol, the result is ideographic, or

logographic, writing. In Chinese writing, for example, every word originally had a

symbol based not on the sound of the word but on its meaning.

Another method, fundamentally different, probably grew out of ideographic

writing: the use of the phonogram, which represents sound rather than meaning.

Pictures came to be used as visual puns in what is called a rebus—for example,

35

36

chapter 3

pictures of a necktie and a raccoon might represent the word tycoon. Such a method

is the beginning of a syllabary, in which symbols become so conventionalized as to

be unrecognizable as actual pictures and instead represent syllables.

FROM SEMITIC WRITING TO THE GREEK ALPHABET

Semitic writing, the basis of our own and indeed of all alphabetic writing, usually

represented consonants only. There were ways of indicating vowels, but such

devices were used sparingly. Since Semitic had certain consonantal sounds not

found in other languages, the symbols for these sounds were readily available for

use as vowel symbols by the Greeks when they adopted Semitic writing, which

they called Phoenician. (To the Greeks, all eastern non-Greeks were Phoenices,

just as to the Anglo-Saxons all Scandinavians were Dene ‘Danes.’) The Greeks

even used the Semitic names of the symbols, which they adapted to Greek pho-

netic patterns: thus ’aleph ‘ox’ and beth ‘house’ became alpha and beta because

words ending in consonants (other than n, r, and s) are not in accord with Greek

patterns. The fact that the Greeks used the Semitic names, which had no meaning

for them, is powerful evidence that the Greeks did indeed acquire their writing

from the Semites, as they freely acknowledged having done. The order of the

letters and the similarity of Greek forms to Semitic ones are additional evidence

of this fact.

The Semitic symbol corresponding to A indicated a glottal consonant that did

not exist in Greek. In its Semitic name, ’aleph, the initial apostrophe indicates the

consonant in question. Because the name means ‘ox,’ the letter shape is thought to

represent an ox’s head, though interpreting many of the Semitic signs as pictures is

difficult (Gelb 140–1). Ignoring the initial Semitic consonant of the letter’s name,

the Greeks adapted this symbol as a vowel, which they called alpha. Beth was

somewhat modified in form to B by the Greeks. And from the Greek modifications

of the Semitic names of these first two letters comes our word alphabet.

In the early days, Greeks wrote from right to left, as the Semitic peoples usually

did and as Hebrew and Arabic are still written. But sometimes the early Greeks

would change direction in alternate lines, starting, for instance, at the right, then

changing direction at the end of the line, so that the next line went instead from

left to right, and continuing this change of direction in alternate lines. Solon’s laws

were so written. The Greeks had a word for the fashion—boustrophedon ‘as the ox

turns in plowing.’ Eventually, however, they settled down to writing from left to

right, the direction we still use.

The Greek Vowel and Consonant Symbols

The brilliant Greek notion (conceived about 3000 years ago) of using as vowel sym-

bols those Semitic letters for consonant sounds that did not exist in Greek gave the

Greeks an alphabet in the modern sense of the word. Thus, Semitic yod became iota

(I) and was used for the Greek vowel I; when the Greeks adopted that symbol, they

had no need for the corresponding semivowel [y], with which the Semitic word yod

began. Just as they had changed ’aleph into a vowel symbol by dropping the initial

Semitic consonant, so also the Greeks dropped the consonant of Semitic he and

letters and sounds

37

called it epsilon (E), that is, e psilon (‘e bare or stripped,’ that is, e without the aspi-

rate h). Semitic ayin, whose name began with a voiced pharyngeal fricative nonexis-

tent in Greek, became for the Greeks omicron (O), that is, o micron (‘o little’).

Semitic heth was at first used as a consonant and called heta, but the “rough breath-

ing” sound it symbolized was lost in several Greek dialects, notably the Ionic of Asia

Minor, where the symbol was then called eta (H) and used for long [e:].

The vowel symbol omega (Ω), that is, o mega (‘o big’) was a Greek innovation,

as was upsilon (Y), that is, u psilon (‘u bare or stripped’). Upsilon was born of the

need for a symbol for a vowel sound corresponding to the Semitic semivowel waw.

The sound [w], which waw represented, was lost in Ionic, and in other dialects also.

As a result, waw, which came to be called digamma because it looked like one letter

gamma (Γ) on top of another (F), ceased to be used except as a numeral—but not

before the Romans had taken it over and assigned the value [f] to it.

Practically all of the remaining Semitic symbols were used for the Greek conso-

nants, with the Semitic values of their first elements for the most part unchanged.

Their graphic forms were also recognizably the same after they had been adopted

by the Greeks. Gimel became gamma (Γ), daleth became delta (Δ), and so on. The

early Greek alphabet ended with tau (T). The consonant symbols phi (Φ), chi (X),

and psi (Ψ) were later Greek additions. A good idea of the shapes of the letters and

the slight modifications made by the early Greeks may be obtained from the charts

provided by Ignace Gelb (177) and Holger Pedersen (179). Gelb also gives the Latin

forms, and Pedersen the highly similar Indic ones. Indic writings from the third cen-

tury B.C. onward used an alphabet adapted from the Semitic.

THE ROMANS ADOPT THE GREEK ALPHABET

The Ionic alphabet, adopted at Athens, became standard for writing Greek, but it

was a somewhat different western form of the alphabet that the Romans, perhaps

by way of the Etruscans, were to adopt for their own use. The Romans used a

curved form of gamma (C from Γ), the third letter, which at first had for them the

same value as for the Greeks [g] but in time came to be used for [k]. Another

symbol was thus needed for the [g] sound. This need was supplied by a modifica-

tion in the shape of C, resulting in G: thus, C and G are both derived from Greek Γ.

Latin C was, however, sometimes used for both [g] and [k], a custom that survived

in later times in such abbreviations as C. for Gaius and Cn. for Gnaeus, two

Roman names.

Rounded forms of delta (D from Δ), pi (P from Π), sigma (S from Σ), as well as

of gamma, were adopted by the Romans. All of these rounded forms occurred earlier

in Greek also, though the more familiar Greek literary forms are the angular ones.

The rounded forms doubtless resulted from the use of pen and ink, whereas the angu-

lar forms reflect the use of a cutting tool on stone. Epsilon (E) was adopted without

change. The sixth position was filled by F, the Greek digamma (earlier waw), with

the value [f] in Latin. Next came the modified gamma—G.

H was used as a consonant, as in Semitic and also in Western Greek at the time

the Romans adopted it. The Roman gain in having a symbol for [h] was slight, for

the aspirate was almost as unstable a sound in Latin as it is in Cockney English.

Ultimately, Latin lost it completely. Among the Romance languages—those derived

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from Latin, such as Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese—there is no need for

the symbol, since there is no trace of the sound, though it is retained in some

conservative spellings—for example, French heure and Spanish hora ‘hour’ (but

compare French avoir with Spanish haber ‘to have,’ both from Latin habēre).

The Romans used iota (I) as both a semivowel and a vowel, respectively as in

iudices ‘judges,’ the first syllable of which is like English you. The lengthened form

of this letter, that is, j, did not appear until medieval times, when the minuscule

form of writing developed, using small letters exclusively. (In ancient writing only

majuscules, that is, capital letters, were used.) The majuscule form of this newly

shaped i, that is, J, is a product of modern times.

Kappa (K) was little used by the Romans, who, as we have seen, preferred C

for the same sound. Next came the Western Greek form of lambda, L, correspond-

ing to Ionic Λ. M and N, from mu and nu, require no comment. The next letter, xi

(Ξ), with the value [ks], was not taken over into Latin; thus Roman O immediately

followed N. The Romans adopted pi (Π) in its rounded form P, which created a

problem because the usual form of the Greek letter rho had exactly that shape (P),

so the Romans had to use an alternative tailed form of rho, as the early Greeks had

also sometimes done, thus creating R. The symbol Q (koppa) stood for a sound

that had dropped out of Greek, though the symbol continued to be used as a

numeral in that language. The Romans used it as a variant of C in one position

only, preceding V; thus the sequence [kw] was written QV—the qu of printed

texts. Sigma in its rounded form S was adopted unchanged. Tau (T) was likewise

unchanged. Upsilon was adopted in the form V and used for both consonant [w]

(later [v]) and vowels [u] and [ʊ].

The symbol Z (Greek zeta), which had occupied seventh place in the early

Roman alphabet but had become quite useless in Latin because the sound it repre-

sented was not a separate phoneme, was reintroduced and placed at the end of the

alphabet in the time of Cicero, when a number of Greek words were coming to be

used in Latin. Another form of upsilon, Y, was also used in borrowed words to

indicate the Greek vowel sound, which was like French u and German ü.

The Romans adopted the letter chi (X) with its Western Greek value [ks]. They

represented the sound that letter stood for in other dialects of Greek (which was an

aspirated [kh]) by the two letters CH, just as they used TH for Greek theta (Θ) [th]

and PH for Greek phi (Φ) [ph]. These were accurate enough representations of the

Classical Greek sounds, which were similar to the aspirated initial sounds of

English kin, tin, and pin. The Romans very sensibly used H to represent that aspi-

ration, or breath puff, because the sounds represented by Latin C, T, and P appar-

ently lacked aspiration, just as k, t, and p do in English when preceded by s—for

example, in skin, sting, and spin.

Later Developments of the Roman

and Greek Alphabets

Even though it lacked a good many symbols for sounds in the modern languages of

Europe, the Roman alphabet was taken over by various European peoples, though

not by those Slavic peoples who in the ninth century got their alphabet directly

from Greek. The Slavic alphabet is called Cyrillic from the Greek missionary leader

letters and sounds

39

Cyril. Greek missionaries, sent out from Byzantium, added a number of symbols for

sounds that were not in Greek and modified the shapes and uses of some of the

letters for the Russians, Bulgarians, and Serbs, who use this alphabet. However,

those Slavs whose Christianity stems from Rome—Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats,

and Slovenians—use the Roman alphabet, supplemented by diacritical marks (for

example, Polish ć and Czech č) and by combinations of letters (for example, Polish

cz and sz) to represent sounds for which the Roman alphabet made no provision.

All those who adopted the Roman alphabet had to supplement it in various

ways. Such un-Latin sounds as the o-umlaut and the u-umlaut of German are writ-

ten ö and ü. The superposed pair of dots, called an umlaut or dieresis, is also used

in many other languages to indicate vowel quality. Other diacritical marks used to

supplement the Latin alphabet are accents—the acute, grave, and circumflex (as,

respectively, in French résumé, à la mode, and rôle). The wedge is used in Czech

and is illustrated by the Czech name for the diacritic, haček. The tilde is used to

indicate a palatal n in Spanish cañon ‘canyon’ and a nasalized vowel in

Portuguese São Paulo. The cedilla is familiar in a French loanword like façade.

Other, less familiar, diacritical markings include the bar of Polish (ł), the circle of

Swedish and Norwegian (å), and the hook of Polish (ę).

The Use of Digraphs

Digraphs (pairs of letters representing single sounds), or even longer sequences like

the German trigraph sch, have also been used to indicate un-Latin sounds, such as

those that we spell sh, ch, th, and dg. In gu, as in guest and guilt, the u has the sole

function of indicating that the g stands for the [g] of go rather than the [ǰ] that we

might expect it to represent before e or i, as in gesture and gibe. The h of gh

performs a similar useful function in Ghent to show that it is not pronounced like

gent. It serves no such purpose in ghastly and ghost, where it was introduced by the

early printer William Caxton perhaps from Flemish gheest. Except in recent loan-

words, English makes scant use of diacritical marks, preferring other devices, such

as the aforementioned use of digraphs and of entirely different symbols. For exam-

ple, English writes man, men, whereas German indicates the same vowel change by

a dieresis in Mann, Männer.

Additional Symbols

Other symbols have sometimes been added to the Roman alphabet by those who

adopted it. For example, the runic þ (called thorn) and ƿ (called wynn) were used

by the early English, along with their modification of d as ð (called edh), all now

abandoned as far as English writing is concerned. The þ and the ð were also

adopted by the Scandinavians, who got their Roman alphabet from the English,

and those letters are still used in writing Icelandic.

The ligature œ (combining o and e), which indicated a single vowel sound in

post-Classical Latin, was used in early Old English for the o-umlaut sound (as in

German schön). When this sound was later unrounded, there was no further need

for œ in English. It was taken over by the Scandinavians, who then abandoned it,

the Danes devising ø and the Swedes using ö instead. British English uses it in a few

40

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classical loanwords—for instance, amœba and cœnobite, more recently written with

unligatured oe. American usage has simple e in such words.

For the vowel sound of cat, Old English used the digraph ae, later written pre-

vailingly as ligatured æ, the symbol used for the same sound in the alphabet of the

International Phonetic Association. This digraph also came from Latin, in which its

earlier value (illustrated in German Kaiser, from Caesar) had shifted to a sound like

the English one. The letter æ was called æsc ‘ash,’ the name of the runic symbol for

the same sound, though the rune’s shape was quite different from the Latin-English

digraph. In early Middle English times, the symbol went out of use. Today æ is

used in Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. It occurs rarely, with a quite different

value, in loanwords of classical origin, like encyclopædia and anæmia, spelled ency-

clopedia and anemia in current American usage and often with unligatured ae in

British English.

THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH WRITING

The Germanic Runes

When the English came to Britain, some of them were already literate in runic writ-

ing, but it was a highly specialized craft, the skill of rune masters. These Germanic

invaders had little need to write, but on the few occasions when they did, they used

twenty-four runes, derived from their relatives on the Continent, to which they

added six new letters. These runes were early associated with pagan mysteries—

the word rune means ‘secret.’ They were angular letters originally cut or scratched

in wood and used mainly for inscriptions, charms, and the like.

The order of the runic symbols is quite different from that of the Roman

alphabet. As modified by the English, the first group of letters consists of charac-

ters corresponding to f, u, þ, o, r, c, g, and w. The English runic alphabet is some-

times called futhorc from the first six of these. Despite the differences in the order

of the runes, their close similarities to both Greek and Latin letters make it

obvious that they are derived partly from the Roman alphabet, with which the

Germanic peoples were certainly familiar, or from some other early Italic alphabet

akin to the Roman.

The Anglo-Saxon Roman Alphabet

In the early Middle Ages, various script styles—the “national hands”—developed in

lands that had been provinces of the Roman Empire. But Latin writing, as well as the

Latin tongue, had all but disappeared in the Roman colony of Britannia, which the

Romans had to abandon even before the arrival of the English. With their conversion

to Christianity, the English adopted the Roman alphabet (though they continued to

use runes for special purposes). The missionaries from Rome who spread the gospel

among the heathen Anglo-Saxons must have used an Italian style of writing. Yet Old

English manuscripts are in a script called the Insular hand, which was an Irish modi-

fication of the Roman alphabet. The Irish, who had been converted to Christianity

before the English came to Britain, taught their new neighbors how to write in their

style. A development of the Insular hand is still used in writing Irish Gaelic.

letters and sounds

41

The Insular hand has rounded letters, each distinct and easy to recognize. To

the ordinary letters of the Roman alphabet (those we use minus j, v, and w), the

Anglo-Saxon scribes added several others. They were the digraph æ, which we call

ash after the runic letter æsc; two runic letters borrowed from the futhorc: þ thorn

(for the sounds [θ] or [ð]) and ƿ wynn (for the sound [w]); and ð, a modification of

Roman d that we call edh (for the same sounds as thorn). Several of the Roman

letters, notably f, g, r, s, and t, had distinctive shapes. S indeed had three alternate

shapes, one of which, called long s ( ), looks very much like an “f” in modern typo-

graphy except that the horizontal stroke does not go through to the right of the let-

ter. This particular variant of s was used until the end of the eighteenth century

except in final position, because printers followed what was the general practice

of the manuscripts.

When the Normans conquered England in 1066, they introduced a number of

Norman-French customs, including their own style of writing, which replaced the

Insular hand. The special letters used in the latter were lost, although several of

them, notably thorn and the long s, continued for some time. Norman scribes also

introduced or reintroduced some digraphs into English orthography, especially ch,

ph, and th, which were used in spelling words ultimately from Greek, although th

was also a revived spelling for the English sounds that Anglo-Saxon scribes had

written with thorn and edh, and ch was pressed into service for representing [č].

Other combinations with h also appeared and are still with us: gh, sh, and wh.

Gradually the letters of the alphabet assumed their present number. J was origi-

nally a prolonged and curved variant of i used in final position when writing Latin

words like filii that ended in double i. Since English scribes used y for i in final posi-

tion (compare marry with marries and married, holy day with holiday), the use of j in

English was for a long time more or less confined to the representation of numerals—

for instance, iij for three and vij for seven. The dot, incidentally, was not originally

part of minuscule i, but is a development of the faint sloping line that came to be

put above this insignificant letter to distinguish it from contiguous stroke letters

such as m, n, and u, as well as to distinguish double i from u. It was later extended

by analogy to j, where, because of the different shape of the letter, it performed no

useful purpose.

The history of the curved and angular forms of u—that is, u and v—was simi-

lar to that of i and j. Latin consonantal and vocalic u came to represent quite differ-

ent sounds early in the Christian era, when consonantal u, hitherto pronounced [w],

became [v]. Nevertheless, the two forms u and v continued to be used more or less

interchangeably for either vowel or consonant. As its name indicates, w was origi-

nally a double u, although it was the angular shape v that was actually doubled, a

shape we now regard as a different letter.

THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH CONSONANT SOUNDS

The words in the lists below give some idea of the variety of ways our conventional

spelling symbolizes the sounds of speech. More frequent or “normal” spellings are

given first, in the various positions in which they occur (initially, medially, finally).

Then, introduced by “also” come spellings that are relatively rare, a few of them

unique. The words cited to illustrate unusual spellings have been assembled not

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chapter 3

for the purpose of stocking an Old Curiosity Shop of English orthography or to

encourage the popular notion that our spelling is chaotic—which it is not—but

rather to show the diversity of English spelling, a diversity for which, as we shall

see in subsequent chapters, there are historical reasons. A few British pronuncia-

tions are included; these are labeled BE, for British English. Characteristically

American pronunciations are labeled AE, for American English. Because speakers

of English vary in their pronunciation, some of the following words will not illus-

trate the intended sounds for all speakers. For example, although hiccough usually

ends in [p], being merely a respelling of hiccup, some speakers now pronounce it

with final [f] under the influence of the spelling -cough.

Stops

[b] bib, ruby, rabble, ebb, tribe; also cupboard, raspberry, bhangra

[p] pup, stupid, apple, ripe; also Lapp, grippe, Clapham, hiccough

[d] dud, body, muddle, add, bride, ebbed; also bdellium, dhoti, Gandhi

[t] toot, booty, matter, butt, rate, hopped; also cigarette, Thomas, ptomaine, receipt,

debt, subtle, phthisic, indict, victuals, veldt; the sequence [ts] is written z in schizo-

phrenia and Mozart, zz in mezzo (also pronounced as [dz])

[g] gag, lager, laggard, egg; also guess, vague, ghost, aghast, Haigh, mortgage, tradi-

tional but now rare blackguard; the sequence [gz] is written x in exalt and exist,

and xh in exhaust and exhilarate; the sequence [gž] is written x in luxurious

[k] kit, naked, take, pick, mackerel, car, bacon, music; also quaint, piquet, queue, phy-

sique, trek (k by itself in final position being rare), chukker, chasm, machination,

school, stomach, sacque, khaki, ginkgo; the sequence [ks] is written x in fix and

exit (also pronounced as [gz]) and xe in BE axe; the sequence [kš] is written x in

luxury (also pronounced as [gž]), xi in anxious, and cti in action

Fricatives

[v] valve, over; also Slav, Stephen, of, sometimes schwa

[f] fife, if, raffle, off; also soften, rough, toughen, phantom, sphinx, elephant, Ralph,

Chekhov, BE lieutenant

[ð] then, either, bathe; also loath (also pronounced as [θ]), edh, eisteddfod, ye (pseudo

archaic spelling for the)

[θ] thin, ether, froth; also phthalein, chthonian

[z] zoos, fizzle, fuzz, ooze, visage, phase; also fez, possess, Quincy (MA), xylophone,

czar, clothes (as suggested by the rime in Ophelia’s song: “Then up he rose, &

don’d his clothes” in Hamlet 4.5.52; it is still naturally so pronounced by many,

who thus distinguish the noun clothes from the verb, whereas spelling pronouncers

say the noun and verb alike with [-ðz])

[s] sis, pervasive, vise, passive, mass, cereal, acid, vice; also sword, answer, scion,

descent, evanesce, schism, psychology, Tucson, façade, isthmus

[ž] medially: leisure, azure, delusion, equation; also initially and finally in a few recent

borrowings especially from French: genre and rouge (the sound seems to be gaining

ground, perhaps to some extent because of a smattering of school French, though

the words in which it is new in English are not all of French provenience—for

instance, adagio, rajah, Taj Mahal, and cashmere)

letters and sounds

43

[š] shush, marshal; also chamois, machine, cache, martial, precious, tension, passion,

fashion, sure, question, ocean, luscious, nausea, crescendo, fuchsia

[h] ha, Mohawk; also who, school-Spanish Don Quixote as “Donkey Hoty,” recent

junta (though the word has since the seventeenth century been regarded as English

and therefore pronounced with the beginning consonant and vowel of junk),

Mojave, gila

Affricates

[ǰ] judge, major, gem, regiment, George, surgeon, region, budget; also exaggerate, raj,

educate, grandeur, soldier, spinach, congratulate (with assimilation of the earlier

voiceless affricate to the voicing of the surrounding vowels), BE gaol (exception-

ally before a)

[č] church, lecher, butcher, itch; also Christian, niche, nature, cello, Czech

Nasals

[m] mum, clamor, summer, time; also comb, plumber, solemn, government, paradigm,

BE programme

[n] nun, honor, dine, inn, dinner; also know, gnaw, sign, mnemonic, pneumonia

[ŋ] sing, wringer, finger, sink; also tongue, handkerchief, BE charabanc, BE restau-

rant, Pago Pago

Liquids

[l]

lapel, felon, fellow, fell, hole; also Lloyd, kiln, Miln[e] (the n of kiln and Miln[e]

ceased to be pronounced in Middle English times, but pronunciation with n is com-

mon nowadays because of the spelling)

[r] rear, baron, barren, err, bare; also write, rhetoric, bizarre, hemorrhage, colonel

Semivowels

[w] won, which (a fairly large, if decreasing, number of Americans have in wh-words

not [w] but [hw]); also languish, question, ouija, Oaxaca, huarache, Juan; in one,

the initial [w] is not symbolized

[y] yet, bullion; also canyon, llama (also pronounced with [l]), La Jolla, BE capercail-

zie ‘wood grouse,’ BE bouillon, jaeger, hallelujah; the sequence [ny] is written gn

in chignon and ñ in cañon

THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH VOWEL SOUNDS

As with the consonants, words are supplied below to illustrate the various spellings

of each vowel sound, although some of the illustrative words may have alternative

pronunciations. Diphthongs, vowels before [r], and unstressed [i], [ɪ], and [ǝ] are

treated separately.

Front Vowels

[i]

evil, cede, meter, eel, lee, eat, sea; also ceiling, belief, trio, police, people, key, quay,

Beauchamp, Aesop, BE Oedipus, Leigh, camellia (this word is exceptional in that

44

chapter 3

the spelling e represents [i] rather than the expected [ɛ] before a double consonant

symbol), BE for the Cambridge college Caius [kiz]

[ɪ] it, stint; also English, sieve, renege, been, symbol, build, busy, women, old-

fashioned teat

[e] acorn, ape, basin, faint, gray; also great, emir, mesa, fete, they, eh (a Canadian

interjection with several pronunciations—see next entry), Baal, rein, reign, mael-

strom, BE gaol, gauge, weigh, BE halfpenny, BE Ralph (as in act 2 of W. S.

Gilbert’s H.M.S. Pinafore: “In time each little waif / Forsook his foster-mother, /

The well-born babe was Ralph— / Your captain was the other!!!”), chef d’oeuvre,

champagne, Montaigne, AE cafe, Iowa (locally), cachet, foyer, melee, Castlereagh

[ɛ] bet, threat; also BE ate, again, says, many, BE Pall Mall, catch (alternating with

[æ]), friend, heifer, Reynolds, leopard, eh, phlegm, aesthetic

[æ] at, plan; also plaid, baa, ma’am, Spokane, BE The Mall, salmon, Caedmon, AE

draught, meringue; British English has [ɑ] in a large number of words in which

American has [æ], such as calf, class, and path

Central Vowel

[ǝ] utter, but; also other, blood, does (verb), young, was (alternating with [ɑ]), pandit

(alternating with [æ]), uh, ugh ([ǝ] alternating with [ǝg] or [ǝk]), BE twopence

Back Vowels

[u] ooze, tooth, too, you, rude, rue, new; also to, tomb, pooh, shoe, Cowper, boule-

vard, through, brougham, fruit, nautical leeward, Sioux, rheumatic, lieutenant (BE

has [lɛfˈtɛnǝnt] or for a naval officer [lǝˈtɛnǝnt]), bouillon, rendezvous, ragout, and

alternating with [ʊ] in room, roof, and some other words written with oo

Spellings other than with o, oo, and ou usually represent the sequence [yu]

initially (use, Europe, ewe) and after labial and palatovelar consonants: [b]

(bureau, beauty), [p] (pew, pure), [g] (gules, gewgaw), [k] (cue, queue, Kew), [v]

(view), [f] (few, fuel, feud), [h] (hue, hew, human; the spelling of the Scottish sur-

name Home [hyum] is exceptional), and [m] (music, mew). After dental conso-

nants there is considerable dialect variation between [u] and [yu]: [n] (nuclear,

news, neutral), [t] (tune, Teuton), [d] (dew, duty), [θ] (thew), [s] (sue, sewer), [z]

(resume), and [l] (lewd, lute). After the alveolopalatals [š], [č], and [ǰ], older [yu] is

now quite rare.

[ʊ] oomph, good, pull; also wolf, could, Wodehouse, worsted ‘a fabric’ (but also with

a spelling pronunciation)

[o] oleo, go, rode, road, toe, tow, owe, oh; also soul, brooch, folk, beau, chauffeur,

AE cantaloupe, picot, though, yeoman, cologne, sew, cocoa, Pharaoh, military

provost

[ɔ] all, law, awe, cause, gone; also broad, talk, ought, aught, Omaha, Utah, Arkansas,

Mackinac, BE Marlborough [ˈmɔlb(ǝ)rǝ], BE for the Oxford college Magdalen

[ˈmɔdlɪn] (the name of the Cambridge college is written Magdalene, but is

pronounced exactly the same), Gloucester, Faulkner, Maugham, Strachan

[ɑ] atman, father, spa, otter, stop (the [ɑ] in so-called short-o words like clock, collar,

got, and stop prevails in American English; British English typically has a slightly

letters and sounds

45

rounded vowel [ɒ]); also solder, ah, calm (because of the spelling, many Americans,

mostly younger, insert [l] in this word and others spelled al, for instance, alms,

balm, palm, and psalm), bureaucracy, baccarat, ennui, kraal, aunt (pronunciation

of this word with [ɑ], though regarded by many as an affectation, is normal in

African-American, some types of eastern American, and of course British English)

Diphthongs

[aɪ] iris, ride, hie, my, style, dye; also buy, I, eye, ay, aye, pi, night, height, isle, aisle, Geiger, Van Eyck, Van Dyck, kaiser, maestro

[aʊ] how, house; also bough, Macleod, sauerkraut

[ɔɪ] oil, boy; also buoy (sometimes as [buɪ] in AE), Reuters (English news agency),

Boulogne, poi

Vowels plus [r]

[ɪ] or [i] mere, ear, peer; also pier, mirror, weird, lyric

[ɛ], [e], or [æ] bare, air, prayer, their; also aeronaut

[ǝ] urge, erg, bird, earn; also word, journal, masseur, myrrh; in some words in which

the [r] is followed by a vowel (such as courage, hurry, thorough, worry), dialects

have different syllable divisions, before or after the [r]: [hǝr-i] versus [hǝ-rɪ]

[ɑ] art (some Americans have [ɔ] in these words); also heart, sergeant, soiree ([war] for

oir as also in other recent French loans)

[ʊ] or [u] poor, sure, tour, jury, neural; also Boer; poor and Boer are often and sure is

sometimes pronounced with the vowel [o] or [ɔ]

[o] oar, ore; also four, door; many Americans, probably most nowadays, do not dis-

tinguish the vowels [o] and [ɔ] before [r], so for them, this and the next group are

a single set, although historically the distinction was made

[ɔ] or; also war, AE reservoir

[aɪ] fire, tyrant; also choir (with oir representing [waɪr])

[aʊ] flour, flower; also dowry, coward, sauerkraut

[ɔɪ] (a rare combination) coir

Unstressed Vowels

[i]

or [ɪ] at the end of a word: body, honey; also Macaulay, specie, Burleigh, Ralegh

(one spelling of Sir Walter’s surname), BE Calais [ˈkælɪ], recipe, guinea, coffee, BE

ballet [ˈbælɪ], taxi, BE Carew, challis, chamois

followed by another vowel: aerial, area; also Israel, Ephraim

[ɪ] followed by a velar consonant: ignore, topic, running

[ǝ] or [ɪ] followed by a consonant other than a velar or [r]: illumine, elude, bias,

bucket; also Aeneas, mysterious, mischief, forfeit, biscuit, minute (noun), marriage,

portrait, palace, lettuce, tortoise, dactyl

[ǝ] at the end of a word: Cuba; also Noah, Goethe, Edinburgh [–brǝ]; alternating with

[o] in piano, borough, window, bureau, and with [i] or [ɪ] in Cincinnati, Miami,

Missouri

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followed by a consonant other than [r]: bias, remedy, ruminate, melon, bonus,

famous; also Durham, foreign, Lincoln, Aeschylus, Renaissance, authority, BE

blancmange

followed by [r]: bursar, butter, nadir, actor, femur; also glamour, Tourneur, cup-

board, avoirdupois

SPELLING PRONUNCIATIONS

AND PRONUNCIATION SPELLINGS

Many literate people suppose that writing is more important than speech and that

the letters of the alphabet have fixed sounds. This is to put the cart before the

horse. Letters do not “have” sounds, but merely represent them. Nevertheless, liter-

ate people are likely to feel that they do not really know a word until the question

“How do you spell it?” has been answered.

A knowledge of spelling has been responsible for changing the pronunciation of

some words. When a word’s spelling and pronunciation do not agree, the sound

may be changed to be closer to the spelling. One example of such spelling pronun-

ciation is [bed] rather than traditional [bæd] for bade. Other examples follow.

The t in often became silent around the seventeenth century, as it did also in

soften. But by the end of the eighteenth century, an awareness of the letter in the

spelling of often caused many people to start pronouncing it again. Nowadays the

pronunciation with [t] is so widespread that many Gilbert and Sullivan fans may

miss the point of the orphan–often dialogue in The Pirates of Penzance, culminating

in Major-General Stanley’s question to the Pirate King, “When you said [ɔfǝn] did

you mean ‘orphan’—a person who has lost his parents, or ‘often’—frequently?”

This will make no sense to those who have restored the t in often (and keep the r

in orphan). For the play’s original audiences, who did not pronounce r before a

consonant or the t in often, the words were homophones.

The compound forehead came to be pronounced [ˈfɔrǝd], as in the nursery rime

about the little girl who had a little curl right in the center of her forehead, and

when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was hor-

rid, in which forehead rimes with horrid. The spelling, however, has caused the sec-

ond part of the compound to be again pronounced as [hɛd]. Reanalysis of breakfast

as break plus fast would be parallel.

Rare words are particularly likely to acquire spelling pronunciations. Clapboard,

pronounced like clabbered until fairly recently, is now usually analyzed as clap plus

board; the same sort of analysis might occur also in cupboard if houses of the future

should be built without cupboards or if builders should think up some fancy name

for them, like “food preparation equipment storage areas.” A number of generations

ago, when people made and sharpened their own tools much more commonly than

now, the word grindstone rimed with Winston.

It is similar with proper names that we have not heard spoken and for which

our only guide is spelling. No one is to be blamed for pronouncing British

Daventry, Shrewsbury, and Cirencester as their spellings seem to indicate; indeed,

their traditional pronunciations as [ˈdentrɪ], [ˈšrozbǝrɪ], and [ˈsɪsɪtǝ] or [ˈsɪzɪtǝ]

have become old-fashioned even in England. In America, the Kentucky town of

letters and sounds

47

Versailles is called [vǝrˈselz] by those who live there and who care nothing for how

the French pronounce its namesake.

The great scholar W. W. Skeat of Cambridge once declared, “I hold firmly to

the belief . . . that no one can tell how to pronounce an English word unless he has at

some time or other heard it.” He refused to hazard an opinion on the pronuncia-

tion of a number of very rare words—among them, aam, abactinal, abrus, and

acaulose—and went on to say, “It would be extremely dishonest in me to pretend

to have any opinion at all as to such words as these.”

The relationship between writing and speech is so widely misunderstood that

many people suppose the “best” speech is that which conforms most closely to

spelling, though this supposition has not yet been extended to such words as

through and night. In our hyperliterate society, writing affects pronunciation more

than it ever did before. This tendency is the reverse of what happened in earlier

times, before English spelling became fixed, when writers spelled words however

they pronounced them.

On the other hand, when a word’s spelling is changed to agree with its pronun-

ciation, the result is a pronunciation spelling (Cassidy and Hall 1:xix). These

include misspellings such as perculate for percolate and nucular for nuclear. A num-

ber of presidents of the United States have favored the pronunciation “nucular,”

although presumably their press secretaries have seen that the conventional spelling

appears in print. Because memento is now usually pronounced with initial [mǝ]

rather than [mɪ], it is sometimes spelled momento.

Other pronunciation spellings, like spicket (for spigot) are used to show a dia-

lect pronunciation. Spellings like sez (for says) and wuz or woz (for was) are used in

writing dialog to suggest that the speaker is talking carelessly, even though the pro-

nunciations indicated by those respellings are the usual ones. Such literary use of

unconventional spellings is called eye dialect because it appeals to the eye as dialect

rather than to the ear.

Some respellings are deliberate efforts to reform orthography. The use of dialog

(for older dialogue) a few sentences above is an example, as are thru, lite, and a

variety of informal respellings favored by Internet users, such as phreak, outta, cee

ya (see you), and enuf. Extreme examples are U ‘you,’ R ‘are,’ and 2 ‘too.’ These

are puns like the older IOU.

WRITING AND HISTORY

Contemporary spelling is the heir of thirteen centuries of English writing in the

Latin alphabet. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that our orthography has traces

of its earlier history both in its general rules and in its anomalies. Whenever we set

pen to paper, we participate in a tradition that started with Anglo-Saxon monks,

whom Irish scribes had taught to write. The tradition progressed through such

influences as the Norman Conquest, the introduction of printing, the urge to reform

spelling in various ways (including an impulse to respell words according to their

etymological sources), and the recent view that speech should conform to spelling.

Nowadays, in fact, we are likely to forget that writing, in the history of humanity

or even of a single language like English, is relatively recent. Before writing,

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chapter 3

historical records of language did not exist. But languages existed, and their histo-

ries can be in some measure reconstructed, as we shall see in the next chapter.

FOR FURTHER READING

Theory and Description of Writing Systems

Coulmas. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems.

Daniels and Bright. The World’s Writing Systems.

Sampson. Writing Systems.

History of Writing

Diringer. The Alphabet.

Fischer. A History of Writing.

Healey. The Early Alphabet.

Hooker. Reading the Past: Ancient Writing.

Houston. The First Writing.

Man. Alpha Beta.

History of English Writing and Spelling

Baron. Alphabet to Email.

Roberts. Guide to Scripts Used in English Writings up to 1500.

Venezky. The American Way of Spelling.

Contemporary Spelling

Carney. A Survey of English Spelling.

Spelling Reform

Haas. Alphabets for English.

Upward et al. The Simplified Spelling Society Presents Cut Spelling.

±±±±±±

The Backgrounds

±±±±±±

4

± C H A P T E R

±±±±

of English

±

English, as we know it, developed in Britain and more recently in America and else-

where around the world. It did not begin in Britain but was an immigrant language,

coming there with the invading Anglo-Saxons in the fifth century. Before that,

English was spoken on the Continent, bordering on the North Sea. And even longer

before, it had developed from a speechway we call Indo-European, which was the

source of most other European and many south-Asian languages. We have no his-

torical records of that prehistoric tongue, but we know something about it and the

people who spoke it from the comparisons linguists have made between the various

languages that eventually developed from it.

Indo-European is a matter of culture, not of genes. The contrast between our

genetic inheritance and the language we speak is highlighted by some recent discov-

eries in genetics. Scholars used to think of early Europe as inhabited by a Paleolithic

(old Stone Age) people who were hunter-gatherers but whose culture was replaced

by Neolithic (new Stone Age) agriculturalists. The latter were supposedly replaced

by a Bronze Age culture (beginning between 4000 and 3000 B.C.), spread by a

sweeping invasion of technologically more advanced people from the east.

Recent genetic studies, however, have established that most modern Europeans

(and of course the Americans descended from them) owe only about 20 percent of

their biological inheritance to the later peoples and 80 percent to their early Paleolithic

ancestors. It looks now as though the genetic characteristics of Europeans have been

remarkably stable, despite the striking changes that have overtaken European culture

between earliest times and the beginning of recorded history.

Linguists have also long thought that the Indo-European languages, of which

English is one, were spread across the Continent by the invading Bronze Age

hordes, who came in chariots and wiped out the native populations and cultures.

More recently, however, it has been posited that Indo-European languages were

spread throughout Europe very much earlier, and that the Indo-European expan-

sion did not follow a simple east-to-west path, but was far more complex and

included a south-to-north migration of early Celtic and Germanic peoples from

Spain and southern France. At the present time all that can be said confidently

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about the early history of the Indo-European languages is that we know less than

we formerly thought we did. Yet we do know some things.

INDO-EUROPEAN ORIGINS

Indo-European Culture

On the basis of cognate words, we can infer a good deal about Indo-European cul-

ture before it spread over many parts of Europe and Asia. That spread started

no later than the third or fourth millennium B.C. and perhaps very much earlier.

Indo-European culture was considerably advanced. Those who spoke the parent

language, which we call Proto-Indo-European, had a complex system of family rela-

tionships. They could count. They used gold and perhaps silver also, but copper

and iron only later. They drank a honey-based alcoholic beverage whose name has

come down to us as mead. Words corresponding to wheel, axle, and yoke make it

clear that they used wheeled vehicles. They were small farmers, not nomads, who

worked their fields with plows, and they had domesticated animals and fowl.

Their religion was polytheistic, including a Sky Father (whose name is pre-

served in the ancient Vedic hymns of India as Dyaus pitar, in Greek myth as Zeus

patēr, among the Romans as Jupiter, and among the Germanic peoples as Tiw, for

whom Tuesday is named). The cow and the horse were important to their society,

wealth being measured by a count of cattle: the Latin word pecus meant ‘cattle’ but

was the source of the word pecūnia ‘wealth,’ from which we get pecuniary; and our

word fee comes from a related Old English word fēoh, which also meant both

‘cattle’ and ‘wealth.’ So we know things about the ancient Indo-European speakers

on the basis of forms that were not actually recorded until long after Indo-

European had ceased to be a single language.

The Indo-European Homeland

We can only guess where Indo-European was originally spoken—but there are

clues, such as plant and animal names. Cognate terms for trees that grow in temper-

ate climates (alder, apple, ash, aspen, beech, birch, elm, hazel, linden, oak, willow,

yew), coupled with the absence of such terms for Mediterranean or Asiatic trees

(olive, cypress, palm); cognate terms for wolf, bear, lox (Old English leax ‘salmon’),

but none for creatures indigenous to Asia—all this points to an area between north-

ern Europe and southern Russia as the home of Indo-European before its disper-

sion. And the absence of a common word for ocean suggests, though it does not

in itself prove, that this homeland was inland.

The early Indo-Europeans have been identified with the Kurgan culture of

mound builders who lived northwest of the Caucasus and north of the Caspian Sea

as early as the fifth millennium B.C. (Gimbutas, Kurgan Culture). They domesticated

cattle and horses, which they kept for milk and meat as well as for transportation.

They combined farming with herding and were a mobile people, using four-wheeled

wagons to cart their belongings on their treks. They built fortified palaces on hilltops

(we have the Indo-European word for such forts in the polis of place names like

Indianapolis and in our word police), as well as small villages nearby. Their society

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51

was a stratified one, with a warrior nobility and a common laboring class. In addi-

tion to the sky god associated with thunder, the sun, the horse, the boar, and the

snake were important in their religion. They had a highly developed belief in life

after death, which led them to the construction of elaborate burial sites, by which

their culture can be traced over much of Europe. Early in their history, they

expanded into the Balkans and northern Europe, and thereafter into Iran, Anatolia,

and southern Europe.

Other locations have also been proposed for the Indo-European homeland,

such as north-central Europe between the Vistula and the Elbe and eastern

Anatolia (modern Turkey and the site of the ancient Hittite empire). The dispersal

of Indo-European was so early that we may never be sure of where it began or of

the paths it followed.

How Indo-European Was Discovered

Even a casual comparison of English with some other languages reveals similarities

among them. Thus English father clearly resembles Norwegian, Danish, and

Swedish fader, Icelandic faðir, Dutch vader, and German Vater (especially when

one is aware that the letter v in German represents the same sound as f ).

Although there is still a fair resemblance, the English word is not quite so similar

to Latin pater, Spanish padre, Portuguese pai, Catalan pare, and French père.

Greek patēr, Sanskrit pitar-, and Persian pedar are all strikingly like the Latin

form, and (allowing for the loss of the first consonant) Gaelic athair resembles the

others as well. It takes no great insight to recognize that those words for ‘father’

are somehow the “same.” Because such similarity of words is reinforced by other

parallels among the languages, we are forced to look for some explanation of the

resemblances.

The explanation—that all those languages are historical developments of a no

longer existing source language—was first proposed several centuries ago by Sir

William Jones, a British judge and Sanskrit scholar in India. The Indo-European

hypothesis, as it is called, is now well supported with evidence from many lan-

guages: a language once existed that developed in different ways in the various

parts of the world to which its speakers traveled. We call it Proto-Indo-European

(or simply Indo-European) because at the beginning of historical times languages

derived from it were spoken from Europe in the west to India in the east. Its “des-

cendants,” which make up the Indo-European family, include all of the languages

mentioned in the preceding paragraph, as well as Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian,

Albanian, Armenian, Romany, and many others.

Nineteenth-century philologists sometimes called the Indo-European family of

languages Aryan, a Sanskrit term meaning ‘noble,’ which is what some of the lan-

guages’ speakers immodestly called themselves. Aryan has also been used to name

the branch of Indo-European spoken in Iran and India, now usually referred to as

Indo-Iranian. The term Aryan was, however, generally given up by linguists after

the Nazis appropriated it for their supposedly master race of Nordic features, but

it is still found in its original senses in some older works on language. The term

Indo-European has no racial connotations; it refers only to the culture of a group

of people who lived in a relatively small area in early times and who spoke a more

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or less unified language out of which many languages have developed over thou-

sands of years. These languages are spoken today by approximately half of the

world’s population.

LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY AND LANGUAGE FAMILIES

In talking about a language family, we use metaphors like “mother” and “daugh-

ter” languages and speak of degrees of “relationship,” just as though languages had

offspring that could be plotted on a genealogical, or family-tree, chart. The terms

are convenient ones; but, in the discussion of linguistic “families” that follows, we

must bear in mind that a language is not born, nor does it put out branches like a

tree—nor, for that matter, does it die, except when every single one of its speakers

dies, as has happened to Etruscan, Gothic, Cornish, and a good many other lan-

guages. We speak of Latin as a dead language, but in fact it still lives in Italian,

French, Spanish, and the other Romance languages. In the same way, Proto-

Indo-European continues in the various present-day Indo-European languages,

including English.

Hence the terms family, ancestor, parent, and other genealogical expressions

applied to languages are metaphors, not literal descriptions. Languages are develop-

ments of older languages rather than descendants in the sense in which people are des-

cendants of their ancestors. Thus Italian and Spanish are different developments of an

earlier, more unified Latin. Latin, in turn, is one of a number of developments of a still

earlier language called Italic. Italic, in its turn, is a development of Indo-European.

Earlier scholars classified languages as isolating, agglutinative, incorporative,

and inflective, exemplified respectively by Chinese, Turkish, Eskimo, and Latin.

The isolating languages were once thought to be the most primitive type: they

were languages in which each idea was expressed by a separate word and in

which the words tended to be monosyllabic. But although Chinese is an isolating

and monosyllabic language in its modern form, its earliest records (from the middle

of the second millennium B.C.) represent not a primitive language but actually one

in a late stage of development. Our prehistoric ancestors did not prattle in one-

syllable words.

Earlier scholars also observed, quite correctly, that in certain languages, such as

Turkish and Hungarian, words were made up of parts “stuck together,” as it were;

hence the term agglutinative (etymologically ‘glued to’). In such languages the elements

that are put together are usually whole syllables having clear meanings. The inflec-

tional suffixes of the Indo-European languages were supposed once to have been inde-

pendent words; hence some early scholars believed that the inflective languages had

grown out of the agglutinative. Little was known of what were called incorporative

languages, in which major sentence elements are combined into a single word.

The trouble with such a classification is that it was based on the now discarded

theory that early peoples spoke in monosyllables. Furthermore, the difference

between agglutinative and inflective languages was not well defined, and there was

considerable overlapping. Nevertheless, the terms are widely used in the description

of languages. Objective and well-informed typological classification has been espe-

cially useful in showing language similarities and differences (Greenberg, Language

Typology).

the backgrounds of english

53

From the historical point of view, however, much more satisfactory is the

genetic classification of languages, made on the basis of such correspondences of

sound and structure as indicate relationship through common origin. Perhaps the

greatest contribution of nineteenth-century linguistic scholars was the painstaking

investigation of those correspondences, many of which had been casually noted

long before.

NON-INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

Before proceeding to a more detailed discussion of the Indo-European group,

we look briefly at those languages and groups of languages that are not Indo-

European. Two important groups have names that reflect the biblical attempt to

derive all human races from the three sons of Noah: the Semitic (from the Latin

form of the name of his eldest son, more correctly called Shem in English) and the

Hamitic (from the name of his second son, Ham). The term Japhetic (from Noah’s

third son, Japheth), once used for Indo-European, has long been obsolete. On the

basis of many phonological and morphological features that they share, Semitic

and Hamitic are thought by many scholars to be related through a hypothetical

common ancestor, Hamito-Semitic, or Afroasiatic, as it is usually called now.

The Semitic group includes the following languages in three geographical sub-

groups: (Eastern) Akkadian, whose varieties include Assyrian and Babylonian;

(Western) Hebrew, Aramaic (the native speech of Jesus Christ), Phoenician, and

Moabitic; and (Southern) Arabic and Ethiopic. Of these, only Arabic is spoken by

large numbers of people over a widespread area. Hebrew has been revived compar-

atively recently in Israel, to some extent for nationalistic reasons. It is interesting to

note that two of the world’s most important religious documents are written in

Semitic languages—the Jewish scriptures or Old Testament in Hebrew (with large

portions of the books of Ezra and Daniel in Aramaic) and the Koran in Arabic.

To the Hamitic group belong Egyptian (called Coptic after the close of the third

century of the Christian era), the Berber dialects of North Africa, various Cushitic

dialects spoken along the upper Nile (named for Cush, a son of Ham), and Chadic

in Chad and Nigeria. Arabic became dominant in Egypt during the sixteenth cen-

tury, when it replaced Coptic as the national language.

Hamitic is unrelated to the other languages spoken in central and southern

Africa, the vast region south of the Sahara. Those sub-Saharan languages are usually

classified into three main groups: Nilo-Saharan, extending to the equator, a large

and highly diversified group of languages whose relationships with one another are

uncertain; Niger-Kordofanian, extending from the equator to the extreme south, a

large group of languages of which the most important belong to the Bantu group,

including Swahili; and the Khoisan languages, such as Hottentot and Bushman, spo-

ken by small groups of people in the extreme southwestern part of Africa. Various

of the Khoisan languages use clicks—the kind of sound used by English speakers as

exclamations and conventionally represented by spellings such as tsk-tsk and cluck-

cluck, but used as regular speech sounds in Khoisan and transcribed by slashes or

exclamation points, as in the !O!kung language, spoken in Angola.

In south Asia, languages belonging to the Dravidian group were once spoken

throughout India, where the earlier linguistic situation was radically affected by the

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Indo-European invasion of approximately 1500 B.C. They are the aboriginal languages

of India but are now spoken mainly in southern India, such as Tamil and Telegu.

The Sino-Tibetan group includes the various languages of China, such as

Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as Tibetan, Burmese, and others. Japanese

is unrelated to Chinese, although it has borrowed the Chinese written characters

and many Chinese words. It and Korean are sometimes thought to be members of

the Altaic family, mentioned below, but the relationship is not certain. Ainu, the

language of the aborigines of Japan, is not clearly related to any other language.

A striking characteristic of the Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian) languages

is their wide geographical distribution in the islands of the Indian and the Pacific

oceans, stretching from Madagascar to Easter Island. They include Malay, Maori

in New Zealand, Hawaiian, and other Polynesian languages. The native languages

of Australia, spoken by only a few aborigines there nowadays, have no connection

with Austronesian, nor have the more than a hundred languages spoken in New

Guinea and neighboring islands.

American Indian languages are a geographic rather than a linguistic grouping,

comprising many different language groups and even isolated languages having little

or no relationship with one another. A very important and widespread group of

American Indian languages is known as the Uto-Aztecan, which includes Nahuatl,

the language spoken by the Aztecs, and various closely related dialects. Aleut and

Eskimo, which are very similar to each other, are spoken in the Aleutians and all

along the extreme northern coast of America and north to Greenland. In the Andes

Mountains of South America, Kechumaran is a language stock that includes Aymara

and Quechua, the speech of the Incan Empire. The isolation of the various groups,

small in number to begin with and spread over so large a territory, may account to

some extent for the great diversity of American Indian tongues.

Basque, spoken in many dialects by no more than half a million people in the

region of the Pyrenees, has always been something of a popular linguistic mystery.

It now seems fairly certain, on the basis of coins and scanty inscriptions of the

ancient Iberians, that Basque is related to the almost completely lost language of

those people who once inhabited the Iberian peninsula and in Neolithic times were

spread over an even larger part of Europe.

An important group of non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe, as well

as in parts of Asia, is the Ural-Altaic, with its two subgroups: the Uralic and the

Altaic. Uralic has two branches: Samoyed, spoken from northern European Russia

into Siberia, and Finno-Ugric, including Finnish, Estonian, Lappish, and Hungarian.

Altaic includes several varieties of Turkish, such as Ottoman Turkish (Osmanli) and

the languages of Turkestan and Azerbaijan, as well as Mongolian and Manchu.

The foregoing is by no means a complete survey of non-Indo-European lan-

guages. It includes only some of the most important groups and individual languages.

In A Guide to the World’s Languages, Merritt Ruhlen lists 17 phyla (large groups of

distantly related languages), including nearly 300 major groups and subgroups and

about 5000 languages, of which 140 are Indo-European. Although Indo-European

languages are fewer than 3 percent of the number of languages in the world, nearly

half the world’s population speaks them.

Languages may be related to each other more distantly in superfamilies.

Joseph Greenberg has posited a linguistic stock called Eurasiatic, which includes

the backgrounds of english

55

Indo-European, Ural-Altaic, and other languages such as Etruscan, Korean,

Japanese, Aleut, and Eskimo. Other linguists have posited even larger superfamilies,

such as Nostratic, which includes many languages of Europe, Asia, Africa, and

North America. Others ask whether all human languages can be traced to a single

original speech, Proto-World or Proto-Human. But no one knows; we are quite in

the dark about how it all began.

MAIN DIVISIONS OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN GROUP

Some Indo-European languages—for example, Thracian, Phrygian, Macedonian,

and Illyrian—survive only in scanty remains. It is likely that others have disap-

peared without leaving any trace. Members of the following subgroups survive as

living tongues: Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, and Germanic.

Albanian and Armenian are also Indo-European but do not fit into any of these

subgroups. Anatolian and Tocharian are no longer spoken in any form.

The Indo-European languages are either satem languages or centum languages.

Satem and centum are respectively the Avestan (an ancient Iranian language) and

Latin words for hundred. The two groups are differentiated by their development of

Indo-European palatal k.

In Indo-European, palatal k (as in *kmtom ‘hundred’) was a distinct phoneme

from velar k (as in the verbal root *kwer- ‘do, make,’ which we have in the Sanskrit

loanword karma and in the name Sanskrit itself, which means something like ‘well-

made’). (An asterisk before a form indicates that it is a reconstruction based on com-

parative study.) In the satem languages—Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and

Albanian—the two k sounds remained separate phonemes, and the palatal k became

a sibilant—for example, Sanskrit (Indic) śatam, Lithuanian (Baltic) šimtas, and Old

Church Slavic sŭto. In the other Indo-European languages, the two k sounds became

a single phoneme, either remaining a k, as in Greek (Hellenic) (he)katon and Welsh

(Celtic) cant, or shifting to h in the Germanic group, as in Old English hund (our hun-

dred being a compound in which -red is a development of an originally independent

word meaning ‘number’). In general, the centum languages tend to be spoken in the

West and the satem languages in the East, although Tocharian, the easternmost of all

Indo-European tongues, belongs to the centum group.

Indo-Iranian

The Indo-Iranian group (Iranian is from the same root as the word Aryan) is one of

the oldest for which we have historical records. The Vedic hymns, written in an

early form of Sanskrit, date from at least 1000 B.C. but reflect a poetic tradition

stretching back to the second millennium B.C. Classical Sanskrit appears about

500 B.C. It is much more systematized than Vedic Sanskrit, for it had been seized

upon by early grammarians who formulated rules for its proper use; the very

name Sanskrit means ‘well-made’ or ‘perfected.’

The most remarkable of the Indian grammarians was Panini. About the same

time (fourth century B.C.) that the Greeks were indulging in fanciful speculations

about language and in fantastic etymologizing, he wrote a grammar of Sanskrit

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that to this day holds the admiration of linguistic scholars. Other ancient Indian

scholars also wrote works preserving the language of the old sacred literature that

put much of the grammatical writing of the Greeks and Romans to shame. Sanskrit

is still written by Indian scholars according to the old grammarians’ rules. It is in

no sense dead as a written language but has a status much like that of Latin in

medieval and Renaissance Europe.

Indic dialects had developed long before Sanskrit became a refined and learned

language. They are called Prakrits (a name that means ‘natural,’ contrasting with

the “well-made-ness” of Sanskrit), and some of them—notably Pali, the religious

language of Buddhism—achieved high literary status. From these Prakrits are indi-

rectly derived the various non-Dravidian languages of India, the most widely

known of which are Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu.

Romany (Gypsy) is also an Indic dialect, with many loanwords from other lan-

guages acquired in the course of the Romanies’ wanderings. When they first appeared

in Europe in the late Middle Ages, many people supposed them to be Egyptians—

whence the name Gypsy. A long time passed before the study of their language

revealed that they had come originally from northwestern India. The name Romany

has nothing to do with Rome, but is derived from the word rom ‘human being.’

Likewise the rye of Romany rye (that is, ‘Romany gentleman’) has nothing to do

with the cereal crop, but is a word akin to Sanskrit rajan ‘king,’ as well as to Latin

rex, German Reich, and English regal and royal (from Latin and French).

Those Indo-Europeans who settled in the Iranian Plateau developed several lan-

guages. Old Persian is the ancestor of modern Iranian. It was the language of the

district known to the Greeks as Persis, whose inhabitants under the leadership of

Cyrus the Great in the sixth century B.C. became the predominant tribe. Many

Persians migrated to India, especially after the Muslim conquest of Iran in the

eighth century. They were Zoroastrians in religion who became the ancestors

of the modern Parsis (that is, Persians) of Bombay. Avestan, another Iranian

tongue, is a sacred language, preserved in the Avesta, a religious book after which

the language is named. There are no modern descendants of Avestan, which was

the language of the sage Zarathustra—Zoroaster to the Greeks.

Armenian and Albanian

Armenian and Albanian are independent subgroups. The first has in its word stock

so many Persian loanwords that it was once supposed to belong to the Indo-Iranian

group; it also has many borrowings from Greek and from Arabic and Syrian.

Albanian also has a mixed vocabulary, with words from Italian, Slavic, Turkish,

and Greek. It is possibly related to the ancient language of Illyria in an Illyrian

branch of Indo-European. Evidence of the ancient language is so meager, however,

and modern Albanian has been so much influenced by neighboring languages that

it is difficult to tell much about its affinities.

Tocharian

The Tocharian language has two varieties, called Tocharian A (an eastern dialect)

and Tocharian B (a western dialect). The language is misnamed. When it was

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discovered at the end of the nineteenth century in some volumes of Buddhist scrip-

tures and monastic business accounts from central Asia, it was at first thought to be

a form of Iranian and so was named after an extinct Iranian people known to the

ancient Greek geographer Strabo as Tocharoi. Later it was discovered that Tocharian

is linguistically quite different from Iranian. Nevertheless, the name has stuck; the

language itself has long been extinct.

Anatolian

Shortly after the discovery of Tocharian, another group of Indo-European lan-

guages was identified in Asia Minor. Excavations uncovered the royal archives at

the capital city of the Hittites, a people mentioned in the Old Testament and in

Egyptian records from the second millennium B.C. Those archives included works

in a number of ancient languages, including one otherwise unknown. As the writ-

ings in the unknown tongue were deciphered, it became clear that the language,

Hittite, was Indo-European, although it had been profoundly influenced by non-

Indo-European languages spoken around it. Later scholars identified several differ-

ent but related languages (Luwian, Palaic, and Lydian), and the new branch was

named Anatolian, after the area where it was spoken. One of the interesting fea-

tures of Hittite is that it preserves an Indo-European “laryngeal” sound (transliter-

ated h) that was lost in all of the other Indo-European languages (for example, in

Hittite pahhur ‘fire’ compared with Greek pûr, Umbrian pir, Czech pýř, Tocharian

por, and Old English fy¯r).

Balto-Slavic

Although the oldest records of the Baltic and the Slavic languages show them as

quite different, most scholars have assumed a common ancestor closer than Indo-

European, called Balto-Slavic. The chief Baltic language is Lithuanian, and the

closely related Latvian is spoken to its north. Lithuanian is quite conservative

phonologically, so that one can find a number of words in it that are very similar

in form to cognate words in older Indo-European languages—for example,

Lithuanian Diēvas and Sanskrit devas ‘god’ or Lithuanian platùs and Greek platús

‘broad.’

Still another Baltic language, Old Prussian, was spoken as late as the seventeenth

century in what is now called East Prussia. Prussians, like Lithuanians and Latvians,

were heathens until the end of the Middle Ages, when they were converted at the

point of the sword by the Knights of the Teutonic Order—a military order that was

an outcome of the Crusades. The aristocracy of the region (their descendants are the

Prussian Junkers) came to be made up of members of this order, who, having saved

the souls of the heathen Balts, proceeded to take over their lands.

Slavic falls into three main subdivisions. East Slavic includes Russian, Ukrainian,

and Belarussian, spoken in Belarus, north of the Ukraine. West Slavic includes

Polish, Czech, the similar Slovak, and Sorbian (or Wendish), a language spoken

by a small group of people in eastern Germany. The South Slavic languages include

Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Slovenian. The oldest Slavic writing we know is in

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Old Church Slavic (or Slavonic), which remained a liturgical language long after it

ceased to be generally spoken.

Hellenic

In ancient times there were many Hellenic dialects, among them Mycenaean, Aeolic,

Doric, and Attic-Ionic. Athens came to assume tremendous prestige, so its dialect,

Attic, became the basis of a standard for the entire Greek world, a koine or ‘com-

mon [dialect],’ which was ultimately to dominate the other Hellenic dialects. Most

of the local dialects spoken in Greece today, as well as the standard language, are

derived from Attic. Despite all their glorious ancient literature, the Greeks have not

had a modern literary language until comparatively recently. The new literary stan-

dard makes considerable use of words revived from ancient Greek, as well as a

number of ancient inflectional forms; it has become the ordinary language of the

upper classes. Another development of the Attic koine, spoken by the masses, is

called demotike ‘popular.’

Italic

In ancient Italy, the main Indo-European language was Latin, the speech of Latium,

whose chief city was Rome. Oscan and Umbrian have long been thought to be sis-

ter languages of Latin within the Italic subfamily, but they may be members of an

independent branch of Indo-European whose resemblance to Latin is due to the

long period of contact between their speakers. It is well known that languages,

even unrelated ones, that are spoken in the same area and share bilingual speakers

(in an association called a Sprachbund) will influence one another and thus become

more alike.

Latin became the most important language of the peninsula. As Rome came

to dominate the Mediterranean world, it spread its influence into Gaul, Spain, and

the Illyrian and Danubian countries (and even into Britain, where Latin failed to

displace Celtic). Thus its language became a koine, as the dialect of Athens had

been earlier. Spoken Latin survives in the Romance languages. It was quite differ-

ent from the more or less artificial literary language of Cicero. All the Romance lan-

guages—such as Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, French, Provençal,

and Romanian—are developments of Vulgar Latin (so called because it was the

speech of the vulgus ‘common people’) spoken in various parts of the late Roman

Empire.

French dialects have included Norman, the source of the Anglo-Norman dia-

lect spoken in England after the Norman Conquest; Picard; and the dialect of

Paris and the surrounding regions (the Île-de-France), which for obvious reasons

became standard French. In southern Belgium a dialect of French, called

Walloon, is spoken. The varieties of French spoken in Quebec, Nova Scotia,

New Brunswick, and Louisiana are all developments of the dialects of northern

France and are no more “corruptions” of standard (Modern) French than

American English is of present standard British. The Cajuns (that is, Acadians) of

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Louisiana are descendants of exiles from Nova Scotia, which was earlier a French

colony called Acadia.

The speech of the old kingdom of Castile, the largest and central part of Spain,

became standard Spanish. The fact that Spanish America was settled largely by peo-

ple from southern Andalusia rather than from Castile accounts for the most impor-

tant differences in pronunciation between Latin American Spanish and the standard

language of Spain.

Because of the cultural preeminence of Tuscany during the Italian Renaissance,

the speech of that region—and specifically of the city of Florence—became standard

Italian. Both Dante and Petrarch wrote in this form of Italian. Rhaeto-Romanic

comprises a number of dialects spoken in the most easterly Swiss canton and in the

Tyrol.

Celtic

Celtic shows such striking correspondences with Italic in its verbal system and

inflectional endings that the relationship between them must have been close,

though not so close as that between Indic and Iranian or Baltic and Slavic. Some

scholars therefore group them together as developments of a branch they call

Italo-Celtic.

The Celts were spread over a huge territory in Europe long before the emer-

gence in history of the Germanic peoples. Before the beginning of the Christian

era, Celtic languages were spoken over the greater part of central and western

Europe. By the latter part of the third century B.C. Celts had spread even to Asia

Minor, in the region called for them Galatia (part of modern Turkey), to whose

inhabitants Saint Paul wrote one of his epistles. The Celtic language spoken in

Gaul (Gaulish) gave way completely to the Latin spoken by the Roman conquerors,

which was to develop into French.

Roman rule did not prevent the British Celts from using their own language,

although they borrowed a good many words from Latin. But after the Angles,

Saxons, and Jutes arrived, British (Brythonic) Celtic was more severely threatened.

It survived, however, and produced a distinguished literature in the later Middle

Ages, including the Mabinogion and many Arthurian stories. In recent years, Welsh

(Cymric) has been actively promoted for nationalistic reasons. Breton is the language

of the descendants of those Britons who, at or before the time of the Anglo-Saxon

invasion of their island, crossed the Channel to the Continent, settled in the

Gaulish province of Armorica, and named their new home for their old one—

Brittany. Breton is thus more closely related to Welsh than to long-extinct Gaulish.

There have been no native speakers of Cornish, another Brythonic language, since

the early nineteenth century. Efforts have been made to revive it: church services

are sometimes conducted in Cornish, and the language is used in antiquarian re-

creations of the Celtic Midsummer Eve rituals—but such efforts seem more senti-

mental than practical.

It is not known whether Pictish, preserved in a few glosses and place-name ele-

ments, was a Celtic language. It was spoken by the Picts in the northwestern part of

Britain, where many Gaelic Celts also settled. The latter were settlers from Ireland

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called Scots (Scotti), hence the name of their new home, Scotia or Scotland. The

Celtic language that spread from Ireland, called Gaelic or Goidelic, was of a type

somewhat different from that of the Britons. It survives in Scots Gaelic, sometimes

called Erse, a word that is simply a variant of Irish. Gaelic is spoken in the remoter

parts of the Scottish highlands and the Outer Hebrides and in Nova Scotia. In a

somewhat different development called Manx, it survived until recently on the Isle

of Man.

In Ireland, which was little affected by either the Roman or the later Anglo-

Saxon invasions, Irish Gaelic was gradually replaced by English. It has survived in

some of the western counties, though most of its speakers are now bilingual. Efforts

have been made to revive the language for nationalistic reasons in Eire, and it is

taught in schools throughout the land; but this resuscitation, less successful than

that of Hebrew in modern Israel, cannot be regarded as in any sense a natural

development.

In striking contrast to their wide distribution in earlier times, today the Celtic

languages are restricted to a few relatively small areas abutting the Atlantic Ocean

on the northwest coast of Europe.

Germanic

The Germanic group is particularly important for us because it includes English.

Over many centuries, certain radical developments occurred in the language spoken

by those Indo-European speakers living in Denmark and the regions thereabout.

Proto-Germanic (or simply Germanic), our term for that language, was relatively

unified and distinctive in many of its sounds, inflections, accentual system, and

word stock.

Unfortunately for us, those who spoke this particular development of Indo-

European did not write. Proto-Germanic is to German, Dutch, the Scandinavian

languages, and English as Latin is to Italian, French, and Spanish. But Proto-

Germanic, which was probably being spoken shortly before the beginning of the

Christian era, must be reconstructed just like Indo-European, whereas Latin is

amply recorded.

Because Germanic was spread over a large area, it eventually developed marked

dialectal differences leading to a division into North Germanic, West Germanic, and

East Germanic. The North Germanic languages are Danish, Swedish, Norwegian,

Icelandic, and Faeroese (very similar to Icelandic and spoken in the Faeroe Islands

of the North Atlantic between Iceland and Great Britain).

The West Germanic languages are High German, Low German (Plattdeutsch),

Dutch (and the practically identical Flemish), Frisian, and English. Yiddish devel-

oped from medieval High German dialects, with many words from Hebrew and

Slavic. Before World War II, it was a sort of international language of the Jews,

with a literature of high quality. Since that time, it has declined greatly in use,

with most Jews adopting the language of the country in which they live; and its

decline has been accelerated by the revival of Hebrew in Israel. Afrikaans is a devel-

opment of seventeenth-century Dutch spoken in South Africa. Pennsylvania Dutch

(that is, Deutsch) is actually a High German dialect spoken by descendants of early

American settlers from southern Germany and Switzerland.

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63

The only East Germanic language of which we have any detailed knowledge is

Gothic. It is the earliest attested of all Germanic languages, aside from a few proper

names recorded by classical authors, a few loanwords in Finnish, and some runic

inscriptions found in Scandinavia. Almost all our knowledge of Gothic comes

from a translation mainly of parts of the New Testament made in the fourth cen-

tury by Wulfila, bishop of the Visigoths, those Goths who lived north of the

Danube River. Late as they are in comparison with the literary records of Sanskrit,

Iranian, Greek, and Latin, these remains of Gothic provide us with a clear picture

of a Germanic language in an early stage of development and hence are of tremen-

dous importance to the history of Germanic languages.

Gothic as a spoken tongue disappeared a long time ago without leaving a trace.

No modern Germanic languages are derived from it, nor do any of the other

Germanic languages have any Gothic loanwords. Vandalic and Burgundian were

apparently also East Germanic in structure, but we know little more of them than

a few proper names.

During the eighteenth-century “Age of Reason,” the term Gothic was applied

to the “dark ages” of the medieval period as a term of contempt, and hence to the

architecture of that period to distinguish it from classical building styles. The gen-

eral eighteenth-century sense of the word was ‘barbarous, savage, in bad taste.’

Later the term was used for the type fonts formerly used to print German (also

called black letter). Then it denoted a genre of novel set in a desolate or remote

landscape, with mysterious or macabre characters and often a violent plot. More

recently it was applied to an outré style of dress, cosmetics, and coiffure, featuring

the color black and accompanied by heavy metal adornments and body piercing in

unlikely parts of the anatomy. Thus the name of a people and a language long ago

lost to history survives in uses that have nothing to do with the Goths and would

doubtless have both puzzled and amazed them.

COGNATE WORDS IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

Words that come from the same source are said to be cognate (Latin co- and gnatus

‘born together’). Thus the verb roots meaning ‘bear, carry’ in Sanskrit (bhar-),

Greek (pher-), Latin (fer-), Gothic (bair-), and Old English (ber-) are cognate, all

being developments of Indo-European *bher-. Cognate words do not necessarily

look similar because their relationship may be disguised by sound changes that

have affected their forms differently. Thus, English work and Greek ergon are

superficially unlike, but they are both developments of Indo-European *wergom

and therefore are cognates. Sometimes, however, there is similarity—for example,

between Latin ignis and Sanskrit agnis from Indo-European *egnis ‘fire,’ a root

that is unrelated to the other words for ‘fire’ cited earlier, but that English has in

the Latin borrowing ignite.

Some cognate words have been preserved in many or even all Indo-European

languages. These common related words include the numerals from one to ten, the

word meaning the sum of ten tens (cent-, sat-, hund-), words for certain bodily

parts (related, for example, to heart, lung, head, foot), words for certain natural

phenomena (related, for example, to air, night, star, snow, sun, moon, wind),

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certain plant and animal names (related, for example, to beech, corn, wolf, bear),

and certain cultural terms (related, for example, to yoke, mead, weave, sew).

Cognates of practically all our taboo words—those monosyllables that pertain to

sex and excretion and that seem to cause great pain to many people—are to be

found throughout the Indo-European languages. Historically, if not socially, those

ancient words are just as legitimate as any others.

It takes no special training to perceive the correspondences between the follow-

ing words:

Latin

Greek

Welsh

English

Icelandic

Dutch

ūnus

oinē1

un

one

einn

een

duo

duo

dau

two

tveir

twee

trēs

treis

tri

three

þrír

drie

1‘one-spot on a die’

Comparison of the forms for the number ‘two’ indicates that non-Germanic [d]

(as in the Latin, Greek, and Welsh forms) corresponds to Germanic [t] (English,

Icelandic, and Dutch). A similar comparison of the forms for the number ‘three’

indicates that non-Germanic [t] corresponds to Germanic [θ], the initial sound of

three and þrír in English and Icelandic. Allowing for later changes—as in the case

of [θ], which became [d] in Dutch, as also in German (drei ‘three’), and [t] in

Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish (tre)—these same correspondences are perfectly

regular in other cognates in which those consonants appear. We may safely assume

that the non-Germanic consonants are older than the Germanic ones. Hence we

may accept with confidence (assuming a similar comparison of the vowels) the

reconstructions *oinos, *dwō, and *treyes as representing the Indo-European

forms from which the existing forms developed. Comparative linguists have used

all the Indo-European languages as a basis for their conclusions regarding corre-

spondences, not just the few cited here.

INFLECTION IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

All Indo-European languages are inflective—that is, all have a grammatical system

based on modifications in the form of words, by means of inflections (endings and

vowel changes), to indicate such grammatical functions as case, number, tense, per-

son, mood, aspect, and the like. Examples of such inflections in Modern English are

cat–cats, mouse–mice, who–whom–whose, walk–walks–walked–walking, and sing–

sings–sang–sung–singing. The original Indo-European inflectional system is very

imperfectly represented in most modern languages. English, French, and Spanish,

for instance, have lost much of the inflectional complexity that once characterized

them. German retains considerably more, with its various forms of noun, article,

and adjective declension. Sanskrit is notable for the remarkably clear picture it

gives us of the older Indo-European inflectional system. It retains much that has

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been lost or changed in the other Indo-European languages, so that its forms show

us, even better than Greek or Latin can, what the system of Indo-European must

have been.

Some Verb Inflections

When allowance is made for regularly occurring sound changes, the relationship of

the personal endings of a verb in the various Indo-European languages becomes

clear. For example, the present indicative of the Sanskrit verb cognate with English

to bear is as follows:

Sanskrit

bharā-mi

‘I bear’

bhara-si

‘thou bearest’

bhara-ti

‘he/she beareth’

bharā-mas

‘we bear’

bhara-tha

‘you (pl.) bear’

bhara-nti

‘they bear’

The only irregularity here is the occurrence of -mi in the first person singular,

as against -o in the Greek and Latin forms cited immediately below. It was a pecu-

liarity of Sanskrit to extend -mi, the regular first person ending of verbs that had no

vowel affixed to their roots, to those that did have such a vowel. This vowel (for

example, the -a suffixed to the root bhar- of the Sanskrit word cited) is called the

thematic vowel. The root of a word plus such a suffix is called the stem. To these

stems are added endings. The comparatively few verbs lacking such a vowel in

Indo-European are called athematic. The m in English am is a remnant of the

Indo-European ending of such athematic verbs.

Leaving out of consideration for the moment differences in vowels and in initial

consonants, compare the personal endings of the present indicative forms as they

developed from Indo-European into the cognate Greek and Latin verbs:

Greek

Latin

pherō1

ferō1

pherei-s

fer-s3

pherei2

fer-t

phero-mes (Doric)

feri-mus

phere-te

fer-tis

phero-nti (Doric)

feru-nt

1In Indo-European thematic verbs, the first person singular present indicative had no ending at all, but only a lengthening of the thematic vowel.

2The expected form would be phere-ti. The ending -ti, however, does occur elsewhere in the third person singular—for instance, in Doric didōti ‘he gives.’

3In this verb, the lack of the thematic vowel is exceptional. The expected forms would be feri-s, feri-t, feri-tis for the second and third persons singular and the second person plural, respectively.

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Comparison of the personal endings of the verbs in these and other languages

leads to the conclusion that the Indo-European endings were as follows (the Indo-

European reconstruction of the entire word is given in parentheses):

Indo-European

-ō, -mi

(*bherō)

-si

(*bheresi)

-ti

(*bhereti)

-mes, -mos

(*bheromes)

-te

(*bherete)

-nti

(*bheronti)

Gothic and early Old English show what these personal endings became in

Germanic:

Gothic

Early Old English

bair-a

ber-u, -o

bairi-s

biri-s

bairi-þ

biri-þ

baira-m

bera-þ1

bairi-þ

bera-þ

baira-nd

bera-þ

4From the earliest period of Old English, the form of the third person plural was used throughout the plural.

This form, beraþ, from earlier *beranþ, shows Anglo Frisian loss of n before þ.

Germanic þ (that is, [θ]) corresponds as a rule to Proto-Indo-European t.

Leaving out of consideration such details as the -nd (instead of expected -nþ) in

the Gothic third person plural form, for which there is a soundly based explanation,

the Germanic personal endings correspond to those of the non-Germanic Indo-

European languages.

Some Noun Inflections

Indo-European nouns were inflected for eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusa-

tive, genitive, dative, ablative, locative, and instrumental. These cases are modifica-

tions in the form of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that show the relationship of

such words to other words in a sentence. Typical uses of the eight Indo-European

cases (with Modern English examples) were as follows:

nominative: subject of a sentence (They saw me.)

vocative: person addressed (Officer, I need help.)

accusative: direct object (They saw me.)

genitive: possessor or source (Shakespeare’s play.)

dative: indirect object, recipient (Give her a hand.)

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67

ablative: what is separated (He abstained from it.)

locative: place where (We stayed home.)

instrumental: means, instrument (She ate with chopsticks.)

The full array of cases is preserved in Sanskrit but not generally in the other

descendant languages, which simplified the noun declension in various ways. The

paradigms in the following table show the singular and plural of the word for

‘horse’ in Proto-Indo-European and five other Indo-European languages. Indo-

European also had a dual number for designating two of anything, which is not

illustrated.

1

Indo-European Noun Declension

Indo-European

Sanskrit

Greek

Latin

Old Irish

Old English

Singular

Nom.

*ekwos

aśvas

hippos

equus

ech

eoh

Voc.

*ekwe

aśva

hippe

eque

eich

Acc.

*ekwom

aśvam

hippon

equum

ech n-2

eoh

Gen.

*ekwosyo

aśvasya

hippou

equī

eich

ēos

Dat.

*ekwōy

aśvāya

hippōi

equō

eoch

ēo

Abl.

*ekwōd

aśvād

equō

Loc.

*ekwoy

aśve

Ins.

*ekwō

aśvena

Plural

N./V.

*ekwōs

aśvās

hippoi

equī

eich

ēos

Acc.

*ekwons

aśvān(s)

hippous

equōs

eochu

ēos

Gen.

*ekwōm

aśvānām

hippōn

equōrum

ech n-2

ēona

D./Ab.

*ekwobh(y)os

aśvebhyas

hippois

equīs

echaib

ēom

Loc.

*ekwoysu

aśvesu

Ins.

*ekwōys

aśvais

1There are a good many complexities in these forms, some of which are noted here. In Greek, for the genitive singular, the Homeric form hippoio is closer to Indo-European in its ending. The Greek, Latin, and Old Irish nominative plurals show developments of the pronominal ending *-oi, rather than of the nominal ending *-ōs. Celtic was alone among the Indo-European branches in having different forms for the nominative and vocative plural; the Old Irish vocative plural was eochu (like the accusative plural), a development of the original nominative plural *ekwōs. The Greek and Latin dative-ablative plurals were originally instrumental forms that took over the functions of the other cases; similarly, the Old Irish dative plural was probably a variant instrumental form. The Latin genitive singular -ī is not from the corresponding Indo-European ending, but is a special ending found in Italic and Celtic (Old Irish eich being from the variant *ekwī).

2The Old Irish n- in the accusative singular and genitive plural is the initial consonant of the following word.

WORD ORDER IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

Early studies of the Indo-European languages focused on cognate words and on

inflections. More recently attention has been directed to other matters of the gram-

mar, especially word order in the parent language. Joseph Greenberg (“Some

Universals of Grammar”) proposes that the orders in which various grammatical

elements occur in a sentence are not random, but are interrelated. For example,

languages like Modern English that place objects after verbs tend to place modifiers

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after nouns, to put conjunctions before the second of two words they connect, and

to use prepositions:

verb þ object: (The workman) made a horn.

noun þ modifier: (They marveled at the) size of the building.

conjunction þ noun: (Congress is divided into the Senate) and the House.

preposition þ object: (Harold fought) with him.

On the other hand, languages like Japanese that place objects before verbs tend

to reverse the order of those other elements—placing modifiers before nouns, put-

ting conjunctions after the second of two words they connect, and using postposi-

tions (which are function words like prepositions but come after, instead of before,

a noun). Most languages can be identified as basically either VO languages (like

English) or OV languages (like Japanese), although it is usual for a language to

have some characteristics of both types. English, for example, regularly puts adjec-

tives before the nouns they modify rather than after them, as VO order would

imply.

Winfred P. Lehmann (Proto-Indo-European Syntax) has marshaled evidence

suggesting that Proto-Indo-European was an OV language, even though the existing

Indo-European languages are generally VO in type. Earlier stages of those lan-

guages often show OV characteristics that have been lost from the modern tongues

or that are less common than formerly. For example, one of the oldest records of a

Germanic language is a runic inscription identifying the workman who made a

horn about A.D. 400:

ek hlewagastiR holtijaR horna tawido

I, Hlewagastir Holtson, [this] horn made.

The order of words in sentences like this one (subject, object, verb) suggests

that Proto-Germanic had more OV characteristics than the languages that evolved

from it.

In standard Modern German a possessive modifier, as in der Garten des

Mannes ‘the garden of the man,’ normally follows the word it modifies; the other

order—des Mannes Garten ‘the man’s garden’—is possible, but it is poetic and

old-fashioned. In older periods of the language, however, it was normal. Similarly,

in Modern English a possessive modifier can come either before a noun (an OV

characteristic), as in the building’s size, or after it (a VO characteristic), as in the

size of the building, but there has long been a tendency to favor the second order,

which has increased in frequency throughout much of the history of English. In the

tenth century, practically all possessives came before nouns, but by the fourteenth

century, the overwhelming percentage of them came after nouns (84.4 to 15.6 per-

cent, Rosenbach 179). This change was perhaps under the influence of French,

which may have provided the model for the phrasal genitive with of (translating

French de).

When we want to join two words in English, we put the conjunction before the

second one (a VO characteristic), as in the Senate and people. But Latin, preserving

an archaic feature of Indo-European, had the option of putting a conjunction after

the second noun (an OV characteristic), as in senatus populusque, in which -que is

the backgrounds of english

69

a conjunction meaning ‘and.’ Modern English uses prepositions almost exclusively,

but Old English often put such words after their objects, so that they functioned as

postpositions, thus:

Harold him wið gefeaht.

Harold him with fought.

Evidence of this kind, which can be found in all the older forms of Indo-

European and which becomes more frequent the farther back in history one

searches, suggests that Indo-European once ordered its verbs after their objects. If

that is so, by late Indo-European times a change had begun that was to result in a

shift of word-order type in many of the descendant languages from OV to VO.

MAJOR CHANGES FROM INDO-EUROPEAN TO GERMANIC

One group of Indo-European speakers, the Germanic peoples, settled in northern

Europe near Denmark. Germanic differentiated from earlier Indo-European in the

following ways:

1. Germanic has a large number of words that have no known cognates in

other Indo-European languages. These could have existed, of course, in

Indo-European but been lost from all other languages of the family. It is more

likely, however, that they were developed during the Proto-Germanic period or

taken from non-Indo-European languages originally spoken in the area occu-

pied by the Germanic peoples. A few words that are apparently distinctively

Germanic are, in their Modern English forms, broad, drink, drive, fowl, hold,

meat, rain, and wife. The Germanic languages also share a common influence

from Latin, treated in Chapter 12 (248–9).

2. Germanic languages have only two tenses: the present and the preterit (or

past). This simplification of a much more complex Indo-European verbal

system is reflected in English bind–bound, as well as in German binden–band

and Old Norse binda–band. No Germanic language has anything comparable

to such forms as those of the Latin future, perfect, pluperfect, and future

perfect forms (for instance, laudābō, laudāvī, laudāveram, laudāverō), which

are expressed in the Germanic languages by verb phrases (for instance, English

I shall praise, I have praised, I had praised, I shall have praised).

3. Germanic developed a preterit tense form with a dental suffix, that is, one

containing d or t (as in spell–spelled [spɛld, spɛlt]) alongside an older pattern of

changing the vowels inside a verb (as in rise–rose). All Germanic languages

have these two types of verbs. Verbs using a dental suffix were called weak by

the early German grammarian Jacob Grimm because they needed the help of a

suffix to show past time. Verbs that did not need such assistance, he called

strong. Grimm’s metaphorical terminology is not very satisfactory, but it is still

used. An overwhelming majority of our verbs add the dental suffix in the

preterit, so it has become the regular and only living way of inflecting verbs in

English and the other Germanic languages. All new verbs form their preterit

that way: televise–televised, rev–revved, dis–dissed, and so forth. And many

older strong verbs have become weak. Historically speaking, however, the

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vowel change in the strong verbs, called ablaut or gradation (as in drive–drove

and know–knew), was quite regular. On the other hand, some weak verbs,

which use the dental suffix, are irregular. Bring–brought and buy–bought, for

instance, are weak verbs because of the suffix -t, and their vowel changes do

not make them strong. No attempt at explaining the origin of this dental suffix

has been wholly satisfactory. Many have thought that it was originally an

independent word related to do.

4. All the older forms of Germanic had two ways of declining their adjectives.

The weak declension was used chiefly when the adjective modified a definite

noun and was preceded by the kind of word that developed into the definite

article. The strong declension was used otherwise. Thus Old English had þā

geongan ceorlas ‘the young fellows (churls),’ with the weak form of geong, but

geonge ceorlas ‘young fellows,’ with the strong form. The distinction is pre-

served in present-day German: die jungen Kerle, but junge Kerle. This particu-

lar Germanic feature cannot be illustrated in Modern English, because English

has happily lost all such declension of adjectives. The use of the terms strong

and weak for both verbs and adjectives, in quite different ways for the two

parts of speech, is unfortunate but traditional.

5. The “free” accentual system of Indo-European, in which the accent shifted

from one syllable to another in various forms of a word, gave way to the

Germanic type of accentuation in which the first syllable was regularly stressed,

except in verbs like modern believe and forget with a prefix, whose stress was

on the first syllable of the root. None of the Germanic languages has anything

comparable to the shifting accentuation of Latin vírī ‘men,’ virṓrum ‘of the

men’ or of hábeō ‘I have,’ habḗmus ‘we have.’ Compare the paradigms of the

Greek and Old English developments of Indo-European *pətḗr ‘father’:

Greek

Old English

Singular nominative

patḗr

fǽder

Singular genitive

patrós

fǽder(es)

Singular dative

patrí

fǽder

Singular accusative

patéra

fǽder

Singular vocative

páter

fǽder

Plural nominative

patéres

fǽderas

Plural genitive

patérōn

fǽdera

Plural dative

patrási

fǽderum

Plural accusative

patéras

fǽderas

In the Greek forms, the accent may occur on the suffix, the ending, or the

root, unlike the Old English forms, which have their accent fixed on the first

syllable of the root. Germanic accent is also predominantly a matter of stress

(loudness) rather than pitch (tone); Indo-European seems to have had both

types of accent at different stages of its development.

6. Some Indo-European vowels were modified in Germanic. Indo-European o was

retained in Latin but became a in Germanic (compare Latin octo ‘eight,’ Gothic

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71

ahtau). Conversely, Indo-European ā became Germanic ō (Latin māter

‘mother,’ OE mōdor).

7. The Indo-European stops bh, dh, gh; p, t, k; b, d, g were all changed in what is

called the First Sound Shift or Grimm’s Law. These changes were gradual,

extending over long periods of time, but the sounds eventually appear in

Germanic languages as, respectively, b, d, g; f, θ, h; p, t, k.

FIRST SOUND SHIFT

Grimm’s Law

Because the First Sound Shift, described by Grimm’s Law, is such an important dif-

ference between Germanic and other Indo-European languages, we illustrate it

below by (1) reconstructed Indo-European roots or words (for convenience omit-

ting the asterisk that marks reconstructed forms), (2) corresponding words from a

non-Germanic language (usually Latin), and (3) corresponding native English

words. (Only a single Indo-European root is given for each set, although the follow-

ing words may be derived from slightly different forms of that root. Therefore, the

correspondence between the two derived words and the Indo-European root may

not be exact in all details other than the initial consonants.)

1. Indo-European bh, dh, gh (voiced stops with a puff of air or aspiration, repre-

sented phonetically by a superscript [ʰ]) became respectively the Germanic

voiced fricatives β, ð, ɣ, and later, in initial position at least, b, d, g. Stated in

phonetic terms, aspirated voiced stops became voiced fricatives and then unas-

pirated voiced stops. These Indo-European aspirated sounds also underwent

changes in most non-Germanic languages. Their developments in Latin, Greek,

and Germanic are shown in the following table:

Indo-European

bh

dh

gh

(that is, [bʰ], [dʰ], and [gʰ])

Latin

f-

f-

h-

(initially; medially: -b-, -d- or -b-, -g-)

Greek

φ

θ

χ

(that is, [pʰ], [tʰ], [kʰ], transliterated ph, th, ch)

Germanic

b

d

g

Keep these non-Germanic changes in mind, or the following examples will not

make sense:

Indo-European bh

Latin f-, Greek ph

Germanic b

bhrāter

frāter

brother

bhibhru-

fiber

beaver

bhlē

flāre

blow

bhreg-

fra(n)go

break

bhudh-

fundus (for *fudnus)

bottom

bhāgo-

fāgus

beech

bhəg-

(Gk.) phōgein ‘to roast’

bake

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chapter 4

Indo-European dh

Latin f-, Greek th

Germanic d

dheigh-

fi(n)gere ‘to mold’

dough

dhwer-

foris

door

dhē-

(Gk.) thē- ‘to place’

do

dhug(h)ətēr

(Gk.) thugatēr

daughter

Indo-European gh

Latin h-, Greek ch

Germanic g

ghordho-

hortus

(OE) geard ‘yard’

ghosti-

hostis

guest

ghomon-

homo

gome (obsolete, but

in brideg(r)oom)

ghol-

(Gk.) cholē (> cholera)

gall

ghed-

(pre)he(n)dere ‘to take’

get

ghaido-

haedus ‘kid’

goat

2. Except when preceded by s, the Indo-European voiceless stops p, t, k became

respectively the voiceless fricatives f, θ, x (later h in initial position):

Indo-European p

Latin, Greek p

Germanic f

pətēr

pater

father

pisk-

piscis

fish

pel-

pellis

fell ‘animal hide’

pūr-

(Gk.) pūr

fire

prtu-

portus

ford

pulo-

pullus

foal

ped-

ped(em)

foot

peku-

pecu ‘cattle’

fee (cf. Ger. Vieh ‘cattle’)

Indo-European t

Latin t

Germanic θ

treyes

trēs

three

ters-

torrēre ‘to dry’

thirst

tū

tū

(OE) þū ‘thou’

ten-

tenuis

thin

tum-

tumēre ‘to swell’

thumb (that is, ‘fat finger’)

tonə-

tonāre

thunder

Indo-European k

Latin k (spelled c, q)

Germanic h

krn-

cornū

horn

kerd-

cord-

heart

kwod

quod

what (OE hwæt)

ker-

cervus

hart

kmtom

cent-

hund(red)

kel-

cēlāre ‘to hide’

hall, hell

kap-

capere ‘to take’

heave, have

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73

3. The Indo-European voiced stops b, d, g became respectively the voiceless stops

p, t, k.

Indo-European b

Latin, Greek, Lithuanian,

Germanic p

Russian b

treb-

trabs ‘beam, timber’

(archaic) thorp ‘village’

(> [archi]trave)

dheub-

(Lith.) dubùs

deep

abel-

(Russ.) jabloko

apple

The sound b was infrequent in Indo-European and extremely so at the beginning of

words. Examples other than those above are hard to come by.

Indo-European d

Latin, Greek d

Germanic t

dwō

duo

two

dent-

dentis

tooth

demə-

domāre

tame

drew-

(Gk.) drūs ‘oak’

tree

dekm

decem

ten (Gothic taíhun)

ed-

edere

eat

Indo-European g

Latin, Greek g

Germanic k

genu-

genu

knee (loss of [k-] is

modern)

agro-

ager ‘field’

acre

genə-

genus

kin

gwen-

(Gk.) gunē ‘woman’

queen

grəno-

grānum

corn

gnō-

(g)nōscere

know, can

Verner’s Law

Some words in the Germanic languages appear to have an irregular development of

Indo-European p, t, and k. Instead of the expected f, θ, and x (or h), we find β, ð,

and ɣ (or their later developments). For example, Indo-European pətēr (represented

by Latin pater and Greek patēr) would have been expected to appear in Germanic

with a medial θ. Instead we find Gothic fadar (with d representing [ð]), Icelandic

faðir, and Old English fæder (in which the d is a West Germanic development of

earlier [ð]). It appears that Indo-European t has become ð instead of θ.

This seeming anomaly was explained by a Danish scholar named Karl Verner

in 1875. Verner noticed that the Proto-Germanic voiceless fricatives (f, θ, x, and s)

became voiced fricatives (β, ð, ɣ, and z) unless they were prevented by any of three

conditions: (1) being the first sound in a word, (2) being next to another voiceless

sound, or (3) having the Indo-European stress on the immediately preceding sylla-

ble. Thus the t of Indo-European pətēr became θ, as Grimm’s Law predicts it

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should; but then, because the word is stressed on its second syllable and the θ is

neither initial nor next to a voiceless sound, that fricative voiced to ð.

Verner’s Law, which is a supplement to Grimm’s Law, is that Proto-Germanic

voiceless fricatives became voiced when they were in a voiced environment and the

Indo-European stress was not on the immediately preceding syllable. The law was

obscured by the fact that, after it had operated, the stress on Germanic words

shifted to the first syllable of the root, thus effectively disguising one of its impor-

tant conditions. (The effect of the position of stress on voicing can be observed in

some Modern English words of foreign origin, such as exert [ɪgˈzərt] and exist

[ɪgˈzɪst], compared with exercise [ˈɛksərsaɪz] and exigent [ˈɛksəǰənt].) The later his-

tory of the voiced fricatives resulting from Verner’s Law is the same as that of the

voiced fricatives that developed from Indo-European bh, dh, and gh.

The z that developed from earlier s appears as r in all recorded Germanic lan-

guages except Gothic. The shift of z to r, known as rhotacism (that is, r-ing, from

Greek rho, the name of the letter), is by no means peculiar to Germanic. Latin flōs

‘flower’ has r in all forms other than the nominative singular—for instance, the gen-

itive singular flōris, from earlier *flōzis, the original s being voiced to z because of

its position between vowels.

We have some remnants of the changes described by Verner’s Law in present-day

English. The past tense of the verb be has two forms: was and were. The alternation

of s and r in those forms is a result of a difference in the way they were stressed in

prehistoric times. The Old English verb frēosan ‘to freeze’ had a past participle from

which came a now obsolete adjective frore ‘frosty, frozen.’ The Old English verb

forlēosan ‘to lose utterly’ had a past participle from which came our adjective forlorn.

Both these forms also show the s/r alternation. Similarly, the verb seethe had a past

participle from which we get sodden, showing the [θ/d] alternation. In early

Germanic, past participles had stress on their endings, whereas the present tense

forms of the verbs did not, and that difference in stress permitted voicing of the last

consonant of the participle stems and hence triggered the operation of Verner’s Law.

The Sequence of the First Sound Shift

The consonant changes described by Grimm and Verner probably stretched over

centuries. Each set of shifts was completed before the next began and may have

occurred in the following order:

1. Indo-European (IE) bh, dh, gh → (respectively) Germanic (Gmc) β, ð, ɣ

2. IE p, t, k → (respectively) Gmc f, θ, x ( → h initially)

3. Gmc f, θ, x, s → (respectively) Gmc β, ð, ɣ, z (under the conditions of Verner’s

Law)

4. IE b, d, g → (respectively) Gmc p, t, k

5. Gmc β, ð, ɣ, z → (respectively) Gmc b, d, g, r

WEST GERMANIC LANGUAGES

The changes mentioned in the preceding section affected all of the Germanic lan-

guages, but other changes also occurred that created three subgroups within the

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75

Germanic branch—North, East, and West Germanic. The three subgroups are

distinguished from one another by a large number of linguistic features, of which

we can mention six as typical:

1. The nominative singular of some nouns ended in -az in Proto-Germanic—for

example, *wulfaz. This ending disappeared completely in West Germanic (Old

English wulf) but changed to -r in North Germanic (Old Icelandic ulfr) and to

-s in East Germanic (Gothic wolfs).

2. The endings for the second and third persons singular in the present tense of

verbs continued to be distinct in West and East Germanic, but in North

Germanic the second person ending came to be used for both:

Old English

Gothic

Old Icelandic

bindest

bindis

bindr

‘you bind’

bindeþ

bindiþ

bindr

‘he/she binds’

3. North Germanic developed a definite article that was suffixed to nouns—for

example, Old Icelandic ulfr ‘wolf’ and ulfrinn ‘the wolf.’ No such feature

appears in East or West Germanic.

4. In West and North Germanic the z that resulted from Verner’s Law appears

as r, but in East Germanic it appears as s: Old English ēare ‘ear’ and Old

Icelandic eyra, but Gothic auso.

5. West and North Germanic had a kind of vowel alternation called mutation

(treated in the next chapter); for example, in Old English and Old Icelandic,

the word for ‘man’ in the accusative singular was mann, while the corre-

sponding plural was menn. No such alternation exists in Gothic, for which the

parallel forms are singular mannan and plural mannans.

6. In West Germanic, the ð that resulted from Verner’s Law appears as d, but it

remains a fricative in North and East Germanic: Old English fæder, Old

Icelandic faðir, Gothic faðar (though spelled fadar).

West Germanic itself was divided into smaller subgroups. For example, High

German and Low German are distinguished by another change in the stop sounds—

the Second or High German Sound Shift—which occurred comparatively recently as

linguistic history goes. It was nearing its completion by the end of the eighth century

of our era. This shift began in the southern, mountainous part of Germany and spread

northward, stopping short of the low-lying northernmost section of the country. The

high in High German (Hochdeutsch) and the low in Low German (Plattdeutsch) refer

only to relative distances above sea level. High German became in time standard

German.

We may illustrate the High German shift in part by contrasting English and

High German forms, as follows. In High German:

Proto-Germanic p appears as pf or, after vowels, as ff (pepper–Pfeffer).

Proto-Germanic t appears as ts (spelled z) or, after vowels, as ss (tongue–Zunge; water–

Wasser).

Proto-Germanic k appears after vowels as ch (break–brechen).

Proto-Germanic d appears as t (dance–tanzen).

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chapter 4

The Continental home of the English was north of the area in which the High

German shift occurred. But even if this had not been so, the English language

would have been unaffected by changes that had not begun to occur at the time of

the Anglo-Saxon migrations to Britain, beginning in the fifth century. Consequently

English has the earlier consonantal characteristics of Germanic, which it shares with

Low German, Dutch, Flemish, and Frisian.

Because English and Frisian (the latter spoken in the northern Dutch province

of Friesland and in some of the islands off the coast) share certain features not

found elsewhere in the Germanic group, they are sometimes treated as an Anglo-

Frisian subgroup of West Germanic. They and Old Saxon share other features,

such as the loss of nasal consonants before the fricatives f, s, and þ, with lengthen-

ing of the preceding vowel: compare High German gans with Old English gōs

‘goose,’ Old High German fimf (Modern German fünf) with Old English fīf ‘five,’

and High German mund with Old English mūð ‘mouth.’

English, then, began its separate existence as a form of Germanic brought by

pagan warrior-adventurers from the Continent to the relatively obscure island that

the Romans called Britannia and, until shortly before, had ruled as part of their

mighty empire. There, in the next five centuries or so, it developed into an indepen-

dent language quite distinct from any Germanic language spoken on the Continent.

FOR FURTHER READING

General

Trask. Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics.

Watkins. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

History of Language

Fischer. A History of Language.

Janson. Speak: A Short History of Languages.

Nature of Language Change

Aitchison. Language Change.

McMahon. Understanding Language Change.

Peoples and Genes

Oppenheimer. The Origins of the British, a Genetic Detective Story.

Sykes. Saxons, Vikings, and Celts.

Wade. “A United Kingdom? Maybe.”

Indo-European Language

Baldi. An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages.

Beekes. Comparative Indo-European Linguistics.

the backgrounds of english

77

Clackson. Indo-European Linguistics.

Gamkrelidze and Ivanov. Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans.

Indo-European Homeland and Culture

Curtis. Indo-European Origins.

Day. Indo-European Origins.

Fortson. “Proto-Indo-European Culture and Archaeology.”

Gimbutas. The Kurgan Culture.

Lincoln. Myth, Cosmos, and Society.

Mallory. In Search of the Indo-Europeans.

Renfrew. Archaeology and Language.

History of Linguistics

Dinneen. General Linguistics.

Robins. A Short History of Linguistics.

Seuren. Western Linguistics.

Historical Linguistics

Campbell. Historical Linguistics.

Campbell and Mixco. A Glossary of Historical Linguistics.

Fox. Linguistic Reconstruction.

Hock and Joseph. Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship.

Lehmann. Historical Linguistics.

Trask. Trask’s Historical Linguistics.

The World’s Languages

Ruhlen. A Guide to the World’s Languages.

Germanic Languages

Green. Language and History in the Early Germanic World.

Harbert. The Germanic Languages.

Nielsen. The Germanic Languages.

±±±±±±±±±±

5

The Old English

C H A P T E R

±±±±±±± Period (449–1100)

The recorded history of the English language begins, not on the Continent, where

we know its speakers once lived, but in the British Isles, where they eventually set-

tled. During the period when the language was spoken in Europe, it is known as

pre–Old English, for it was only after the English separated themselves from their

Germanic cousins that we recognize their speech as a distinct language and begin

to have records of it.

SOME KEY EVENTS IN THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD

The following events during the Old English period significantly influenced the

development of the English language.

• 449 Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians began to occupy Great Britain, thus

changing its major population to English speakers and separating the early

English language from its Continental relatives. This is a traditional date; the

actual migrations doubtless began earlier.

• 597 Saint Augustine of Canterbury arrived in England to begin the conver-

sion of the English by baptizing King Ethelbert of Kent, thus introducing the

influence of the Latin language.

• 664 The Synod of Whitby aligned the English with Roman rather than Celtic

Christianity, thus linking English culture with mainstream Europe.

• 730 The Venerable Bede produced his Ecclesiastical History of the English

People, recording the early history of the English people.

• 787 The Scandinavian invasion began with raids along the northeast seacoast.

• 865 The Scandinavians occupied northeastern Britain and began a campaign

to conquer all of England.

• 871 Alfred became king of Wessex and reigned until his death in 899, rally-

ing the English against the Scandinavians, retaking the city of London, estab-

lishing the Danelaw, securing the kingship of all England for himself and his

successors, and producing or sponsoring the translation of Latin works into

English.

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the old english period (449–1100)

79

• 987 Ælfric, the homilist and grammarian, went to the abbey of Cerne, where

he became the major prose writer of the Old English period and of its

Benedictine Revival and produced a model of prose style that influenced

following centuries.

• 991 Olaf Tryggvason invaded England, and the English were defeated at the

Battle of Maldon.

• 1000 The manuscript of the Old English epic Beowulf was written about this

time.

• 1016 Canute became king of England, establishing a Danish dynasty in Britain.

• 1042 The Danish dynasty ended with the death of King Hardicanute, and

Edward the Confessor became king of England.

• 1066 Edward the Confessor died and was succeeded by Harold, last of the

Anglo-Saxon kings, who died at the Battle of Hastings while fighting against

the invading army of William, duke of Normandy, who was crowned king of

England on December 25.

HISTORY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS

Britain before the English

When the English migrated from the Continent to Britain in the fifth century or per-

haps even earlier, they found the island already inhabited. A Celtic people had been

there for many centuries before Julius Caesar’s invasion of the island in 55 B.C. And

before them, other peoples, about whom we know very little, had lived on the

islands. The Roman occupation, not really begun in earnest until the time of

Emperor Claudius (A.D. 43), was to make Britain—that is, Britannia—a part of the

Roman Empire for nearly as long as the time between the first permanent English

settlement in America and our own day. It is therefore not surprising that there are

so many Roman remains in modern England. Despite the long occupation, the

British Celts continued to speak their own language, though many of them, particu-

larly those in urban centers who wanted to “get on,” learned the language of their

Roman rulers. However, only after the Anglo-Saxons arrived was the survival of

the British Celtic language seriously threatened.

After the Roman legionnaires were withdrawn from Britain in the early fifth

century (by 410), Picts from the north and Scots from the west savagely attacked

the unprotected British Celts, who after generations of foreign domination had nei-

ther the heart nor the skill in weapons to put up much resistance. These same Picts

and Scots, as well as ferocious Germanic sea raiders whom the Romans called

Saxons, had been a considerable nuisance to the Romans in Britain during the latter

half of the fourth century.

The Coming of the English

The Roman army included many non-Italians who were hired to help keep the

Empire in order. The Roman forces in Britain in the late fourth century probably

included some Angles and Saxons brought from the Continent. Tradition says,

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however, that the main body of the English arrived later. According to the

Venerable Bede’s account in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written

in Latin and completed around 730, almost three centuries after the event, the

Britons appealed to Rome for help against the Picts and Scots. What relief they

got, a single legion, was only temporarily effective. When Rome could or would

help no more, the wretched Britons—still according to Bede—ironically enough

called the “Saxons” to their aid “from the parts beyond the sea.” As a result of

their appeal, shiploads of Germanic warrior-adventurers began to arrive.

The date that Bede gives for the first landing of those Saxons is 449. With it the

Old English period begins. With it, too, we may in a sense begin thinking of Britain

as England—the land of the Angles—for, even though the longships carried Jutes,

Saxons, Frisians, and doubtless members of other tribes as well, their descendants

a century and a half later were already beginning to think of themselves and their

speech as English. (They naturally had no suspicion that it was “Old” English.) The

name of a single tribe was thus adopted as a national name (prehistoric Old English

*Angli becoming Engle). The term Anglo-Saxon is also sometimes used for either

the language of this period or its speakers.

These Germanic sea raiders, ancestors of the English, settled the Pictish and

Scottish aggressors’ business in short order. Then, with eyes ever on the main

chance, a complete lack of any sense of international morality, and no fear what-

ever of being prosecuted as war criminals, they very unidealistically proceeded to

subjugate and ultimately to dispossess the Britons whom they had come ostensibly

to help. They sent word to their Continental kinsmen and friends about the cow-

ardice of the Britons and the fertility of the island; and in the course of the next

hundred years or so, more and more Saxons, Angles, and Jutes arrived “from the

three most powerful nations of Germania,” as Bede says, to seek their fortunes in

a new land.

We can be certain about only a few things in those exciting times. The invading

newcomers came from various Germanic tribes in northern Germany, including the

southern part of the Jutland peninsula (modern Schleswig-Holstein). So they spoke

a number of closely related and hence very similar Germanic dialects. By the time

Saint Augustine arrived in Britain to convert them to Christianity at the end of the

sixth century, they dominated practically all of what is now known as England.

As for the ill-advised Britons, their plight was hopeless. Some fled to Wales and

Cornwall, some crossed the Channel to Brittany, and others were ultimately assimi-

lated to the English by marriage or otherwise. Many doubtless lost their lives in the

long-drawn-out fighting.

The Germanic tribes that came first—Bede’s Jutes—were led by the synony-

mously named brothers Hengest and Horsa (both names mean ‘horse,’ an impor-

tant animal in Indo-European culture and religion). These brothers were reputed

to be great-grandsons of Woden, the chief Germanic god, an appropriate genealogy

for tribal headmen. Those first-comers settled principally in the southeastern part of

the island, still called by its Celtic name of Kent. Subsequently, Continental Saxons

were to occupy the rest of the region south of the Thames, and Angles, coming pre-

sumably from the hook-shaped peninsula in Schleswig known as Angeln, settled the

large area stretching from the Thames northward to the Scottish highlands, except

for the extreme western portion (Wales).

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The English in Britain

The Germanic settlement comprised seven kingdoms, the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy:

Kent, Essex, Sussex, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria—the last, the

land north of the Humber estuary, being an amalgamation of two earlier kingdoms,

Bernicia and Deira (see the accompanying map). Kent early became the chief center of

culture and wealth, and by the end of the sixth century its King, Ethelbert (Æðelberht),

could lay claim to hegemony over all the other kingdoms south of the Humber. Later,

in the seventh and eighth centuries, this supremacy was to pass to Northumbria, with

its great centers of learning at Lindisfarne, Wearmouth, and Jarrow (Bede’s own mon-

astery); then to Mercia; and finally to Wessex, with its brilliant line of kings beginning

with Egbert (Ecgberht), who overthrew the Mercian king in 825, and culminating in

his grandson, the superlatively great Alfred, whose successors after his death in 899

took for themselves the title Rex Anglorum ‘King of the English.’

The most important event in the history of Anglo-Saxon culture (which is the

ancestor of both British and American) occurred in 597, when Pope Gregory I dis-

patched a band of missionaries to the Angles (Angli, as he called them, thereby

departing from the usual Continental designation of them as Saxones), in accor-

dance with a resolve he had made some years before. The leader of this band was

Saint Augustine—not to be confused with the African-born bishop of Hippo of the

same name who wrote The City of God more than a century earlier. The apostle to

the English and his fellow bringers of the Gospel, who landed on the Isle of Thanet

in Kent, were received by King Ethelbert courteously, if at the beginning a trifle

warily. Already ripe for conversion through his marriage to a Christian Frankish

princess, in a matter of months Ethelbert was himself baptized. Four years later, in

601, Augustine was consecrated first archbishop of Canterbury, and there was a

church in England.

Christianity had actually come to the Anglo-Saxons from two directions—from

Rome with Saint Augustine and from the Celtic Church with Irish missionaries.

Christianity had been introduced to the British Isles, and particularly to Ireland,

much earlier, before the year 400. And in Ireland Christianity had developed into

a distinctive form, quite different from that of Rome. Irish missionaries went to

Iona and Lindisfarne and made converts in Northumbria and Mercia, where they

introduced their style of writing (the Insular hand) to the English. For a time it

was uncertain whether England would go with Rome or the Celts. That question

was resolved at a Synod held at Whitby in 664, where preference was given to the

Roman customs of when to celebrate Easter and of how monks should shave their

heads. Those apparently trivial decisions were symbolic of the important alignment

of the English Church with Rome and the Continent.

Bede, who lived at the end of the seventh century and on into the first third of

the next, wrote about Christianity in England and contributed significantly to the

growing cultural importance of the land. He was a Benedictine monk who spent

his life in scholarly pursuits at the monastery of Jarrow and became the most

learned person in Europe of his day. He was a theologian, a scientist, a biographer,

and a historian. It is in the last capacity that we remember him most, for his

Ecclesiastical History, cited above, is the fullest and most accurate account we

have of the early years of the English nation.

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BRITAIN IN OLD ENGLISH TIMES

The First Viking Conquest

The Christian descendants of Germanic raiders who had looted, pillaged, and

finally taken the land of Britain by force of arms were themselves to undergo

harassment from other Germanic invaders, beginning late in the eighth century,

when pagan Viking raiders sacked various churches and monasteries, including

Lindisfarne and Bede’s own beloved Jarrow. During the first half of the following

century, other disastrous raids took place in the south.

In 865 a great and expertly organized army landed in East Anglia, led by the

unforgettably named Ivar the Boneless and his brother Halfdan, sons of Ragnar

Lothbrok (Loð brók ‘Shaggy-pants’). According to legend, Ragnar had refused his

bewitched bride’s plea for a deferment of the consummation of their marriage for

three nights. As a consequence, his son Ivar was born with gristle instead of bone.

This unique physique seems to have been no handicap to a brilliant if rascally

career as a warrior. Father Ragnar was eventually put to death in a snake pit in

York. On this occasion his wife, the lovely Kraka, who felt no resentment toward

him, had furnished him with a magical snake-proof coat; but it was of no avail, for

his executioners made him remove his outer garment.

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During the following years, the Vikings gained possession of practically the whole

eastern part of England. In 870 they attacked Wessex, ruled by the first Ethelred

(Æðelræd) with the able assistance of his brother Alfred, who was to succeed him in

the following year. After years of crushing defeats, in 878 Alfred won a signal victory

at Edington. He defeated Guthrum, the Danish king of East Anglia, who agreed not

only to depart from Wessex but also to be baptized. Alfred was his godfather for the

sacrament. Viking dominance was thus confined to Northumbria and East Anglia,

where Danish law held sway, an area therefore known as the Danelaw.

Alfred is the only English king to be honored with the sobriquet “the Great,”

and deservedly so. In addition to his military victories over the Vikings, Alfred reor-

ganized the laws and government of the kingdom and revived learning among the

clergy. His greatest fame, however, was as a scholar in his own right. He translated

Latin books into English: Pope Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, Orosius’s

History, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and Saint Augustine’s Soliloquies.

He was also responsible for a translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and for

the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—the two major sources of our

knowledge of early English history.

Alfred became the subject of folklore, some probably based on fact, such as the

story that, during a bad period in the Danish wars, he took refuge incognito in the

hut of a poor Anglo-Saxon peasant woman, who, needing to go out, instructed him

to look after some cakes she had in the oven. But Alfred was so preoccupied by his

own problems that he forgot the cakes and let them burn. When the good wife

returned, she soundly berated him as a lazy good-for-nothing, and the king humbly

accepted the rebuke.

The troubles with the Danes, as the Vikings were called by the English, though

they included Norwegians and Swedes, were by no means over. But the English so

successfully repulsed further attacks that, in the tenth century, Alfred’s son and grand-

sons (three of whom became kings) were able to carry out his plans for consolidating

England, which by then had a sizable and peaceful Scandinavian population.

The Second Viking Conquest

In the later years of the tenth century, however, trouble started again with the

arrival of a fleet of warriors led by Olaf Tryggvason, later king of Norway, who

was soon joined by the Danish king, Svein Forkbeard. For more than twenty years

there were repeated attacks, most of them crushing defeats for the English, begin-

ning with the glorious if unsuccessful stand made by the men of Essex under the

valiant Byrhtnoth in 991, celebrated in the fine Old English poem The Battle of

Maldon. As a rule, however, the onslaughts of the later Northmen were not met

with such vigorous resistance, for these were the bad days of the second Ethelred,

called Unrǣd (‘ill-advised’). (Rǣd means ‘advice,’ but the epithet is popularly trans-

lated as ‘the Unready.’)

After the deaths in 1016 of Ethelred and his son Edmund Ironside, who sur-

vived his father by little more than half a year, Canute, son of Svein Forkbeard,

came to the throne and was eventually succeeded by two sons: Harold Harefoot

and Hardicanute (‘Canute the Hardy’). The line of Alfred was not to be restored

until 1042, with the accession of Edward the Confessor, though Canute in a sense

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allied himself with that line by marrying Ethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy.

She thus became the mother of two English kings by different fathers: by Ethelred,

of Edward the Confessor, and by Canute, of Hardicanute. (She was not the mother

of either Edmund Ironside or Harold Harefoot.)

The Scandinavian tongues of those days were enough like Old English to

make communication possible between the English and the Danes who were their

neighbors. The English were quite aware of their kinship with Scandinavians: the

Old English epic Beowulf is all about events of Scandinavian legend and history.

And approximately a century and a half after the composition of that literary mas-

terpiece, Alfred, who certainly had no reason to love the Danes, interpolated in his

translation of the History of Orosius the first geographical account of the coun-

tries of northern Europe in his famous story of the voyages of Ohthere and

Wulfstan.

The Scandinavians Become English

Despite the enmity and the bloodshed, then, there was a feeling among the English

that, when all was said and done, the Northmen belonged to the same “family” as

themselves—a feeling that their ancestors could never have had regarding the British

Celts. Although a good many Scandinavians settled in England after the earlier raids,

they had been motivated largely by the desire to pillage and loot. However, the north-

ern invaders of the tenth and early eleventh centuries seem to have been much more

interested in colonizing, especially in East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk), Lincolnshire,

Yorkshire, Westmorland, Cumberland, and Northumberland. So the Danes settled

down peaceably enough in time and lived side by side with the English; they were

good colonizers, willing to assimilate themselves to their new homes. As John

Richard Green eloquently sums it up, “England still remained England; the con-

querors sank quietly into the mass of those around them; and Woden yielded with-

out a struggle to Christ” (cited by Jespersen, Growth and Structure 58).

What of the impact of that assimilation on the English language, which is our

main concern here? Old English and Old Norse (the language of the Scandinavians)

had a whole host of frequently used words in common, among others, man, wife,

mother, folk, house, thing, winter, summer, will, can, come, hear, see, think, ride,

over, under, mine, and thine. In some instances where related words differed notice-

ably in form, the Scandinavian form has won out— for example, sister (ON systir,

OE sweostor). Scandinavian contributions to the English word stock are discussed

in more detail in Chapter 12 (253–4).

The Golden Age of Old English

It is frequently supposed that the Old English period was somehow gray, dull, and

crude. Nothing could be further from the truth. England after its conversion to

Christianity at the end of the sixth century became a veritable beehive of scholarly

activity. The famous monasteries at Canterbury, Glastonbury, Wearmouth,

Lindisfarne, Jarrow, and York were great centers of learning where men such as

Aldhelm, Benedict Biscop, Bede, and Alcuin pursued their studies. The great schol-

arly movement to which Bede belonged is largely responsible for the preservation of

the old english period (449–1100)

85

classical culture for us. The cathedral school at York, founded by one of Bede’s

pupils, provided Charlemagne with leadership in his Carolingian Renaissance, in

the person of the illustrious English scholar Alcuin (Ealhwine), who introduced the

tradition of Anglo-Saxon humanism to western Europe.

The culture of the north of England in the seventh and eighth centuries spread

over the entire country, despite the decline that it suffered as a result of the ham-

mering onslaughts of the Danes. Luckily, because of the tremendous energy and

ability of Alfred the Great, that culture was not lost; and Alfred’s able successors

in the royal house of Wessex down to the time of the second Ethelred consolidated

the cultural and political contributions made by their distinguished ancestor.

Literature in the Old English period was rich in poetry. Cædmon, the first

English poet we know by name, was a seventh-century herdsman whose visionary

encounter with an angel produced a new genre of poetry that expressed Christian

subject matter in the style of the old pagan scops or bards. The epic poem

Beowulf, probably composed in the early eighth century (though not written down

until much later), embodied traditions that go back to the Anglo-Saxons’ origins on

the Continent in a sophisticated blending of pagan and Christian themes. Its

account of the life and death of its hero sums up the ethos of the Anglo-Saxon peo-

ple and combines a philosophical view of life with fairy-story elements that still res-

onate, for example, in J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings. Cynewulf was an

early ninth-century writer who signed four of his poems by working his name, in

runic letters, into their texts as a clue to his authorship.

Prose was not neglected either. Bede’s contributions to scholarship and literature

in the early eighth century and King Alfred’s in the late ninth are mentioned earlier in

this chapter. Ælfric was a tenth- and early eleventh-century Benedictine monk who

devoted himself to the revival of learning among both clergy and laity. He was the

most important prose stylist of classical Old English. His saints’ lives, sermons, and

scriptural paraphrases were models for English prose long after his death and were

the basis for the continuity of English prose through the years following the Norman

Conquest. His grammar, glossary, and colloquy (a humorous dialog between teacher

and pupil) were basic texts for education long after his death.

As for the English language, which is our main concern here, it was certainly

one of the earliest highly developed vernacular tongues in Europe—French did not

become a literary language until well after the period of the Conquest. The English

word stock was capable of expressing subtleties of thought as well as Latin. English

culture was more advanced than any other in western Europe, so the notion that

Anglo-Saxondom was a barbarian culture is very far from the reality.

Dialects of Old English

Four principal dialects were spoken in Anglo-Saxon England: Kentish, the speech of

the Jutes who settled in Kent; West Saxon, spoken in the region south of the

Thames exclusive of Kent; Mercian, spoken from the Thames to the Humber exclu-

sive of Wales; and Northumbrian, whose localization (north of the Humber) is

indicated by its name. Mercian and Northumbrian have certain characteristics in

common that distinguish them from West Saxon and Kentish, so they are sometimes

grouped together as Anglian, those who spoke these dialects being predominantly

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Angles. The records of Anglian and Kentish are scant, but much West Saxon writing

has come down to us, though probably only a fraction of what once existed.

Although standard Modern English is primarily a descendant of Mercian

speech, the dialect of Old English that will be described in this chapter is West

Saxon. During the time of Alfred and for a long time thereafter, Winchester, the

capital of Wessex and therefore in a sense of all England, was a center of English

culture, thanks to the encouragement given by Alfred himself to learning. Though

London was at the time a thriving commercial city, it did not acquire its cultural

or political importance until later.

Most of the extant Old English manuscripts—all in fact that may be regarded

as literature—are written in the West Saxon dialect. However, we are at no great

disadvantage when we compare the West Saxon dialect with Modern English

because differences between Old English dialects were not great. Occasionally a dis-

tinctive Mercian form (labeled Anglian if it happens to be identical with the

Northumbrian form) is cited as more obviously similar to the standard modern

form—for instance, Anglian ald, which regularly developed into Modern English

old. The West Saxon form was eald.

The Old English described here is that of about the year 1000—roughly that

of the period during which Ælfric, the most representative writer of the late tenth

and early eleventh centuries, was flourishing. This development of English, in

which most of the surviving literature is preserved, is called late West Saxon or

classical Old English. That of the Age of Alfred, who reigned in the later years

of the ninth century, is early West Saxon, though it is actually rather late in the

early period.

The Old English period spans somewhat more than six centuries. In a period of

more than 600 years many changes are bound to occur in sounds, grammar, and

vocabulary. The view of the language presented here is a snapshot of it toward the

end of that period.

PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING

Our knowledge of the pronunciation of Old English can be only approximate. The

precise quality of any older speech sound from the era before sound recordings cannot

be determined with absolute certainty. Moreover, in Old English times, as today, there

were regional and individual differences, and doubtless social differences as well. At

no time do all members of any linguistic community, especially an entire nation,

speak exactly alike. Whatever were its variations, however, Old English differed in

some striking ways from our English, and those ways are noted below.

Vowels

One striking difference between the Anglo-Saxons’ pronunciation and ours is that

vowel length was a significant distinction in Old English. Corresponding long and

short vowels probably differed also in quality, but the length of time it took to say

them seems to have been of primary importance. We conventionally mark the spel-

lings of Old English long vowels with a macron and leave short vowels unmarked,

thus: gōd ‘good’ versus god ‘god.’ In phonetic transcriptions, different vowel symbols

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87

will be used where we believe different qualities occurred, but vowel length will be

indicated by a colon, thus for the same two words: [go:d] versus [gɒd].

The vowel letters in Old English were a, æ, e, i, o, u, and y. They represented

either long or short sounds, though sometimes scribes wrote a slanting line above

long vowels, particularly where confusion was likely, for example, gód for [go:d]

‘good,’ but that practice was not consistent. The five vowel letters a, e, i, o, and u

represented what are sometimes referred to as “Continental” values—approxi-

mately those of Italian, Spanish, German, and to some extent of French as well.

The letter æ represented the same sound for which we use it in phonetic transcrip-

tions: [æ]. The letter y, used exclusively as a vowel symbol in Old English, usually

indicated a rounded front vowel, long as in German Bühne, short as in fünf. This

sound, which has not survived in Modern English, was made with the tongue posi-

tion of [i] (long) or [ɪ] (short) but with the lips rounded as for [u] or [ʊ] respectively.

The sounds are represented phonetically as [ü:] and [].

In the examples that follow, the Modern English form in parentheses illustrates

a typical Modern English development of the Old English sound:

a as in habban (have)

ā as in hām (home)

æ as in þæt (that)

ǣ as in dǣl (deal)

e as in settan (set)

ē as in fēdan (feed)

i as in sittan (sit)

ī as in rīdan (ride)

o as in moððe (moth)

ō as in fōda (food)

u as in sundor (sunder)

ū as in mūs (mouse)

y as in fyllan (fill)

y¯ as in my¯s (mice)

Late West Saxon had two long diphthongs, ēa and ēo, the first elements of

which were respectively [æ:] and [e:]. The second elements of both, once differenti-

ated, had been reduced to unstressed [ǝ]. In the course of the eleventh century the

[ǝ] was lost; consequently these long diphthongs became monophthongs that con-

tinued to be differentiated, at least in the standard pronunciation, until well into

the Modern English period but ultimately fell together as [i:], as in beat from Old

English bēatan and creep from crēopan.

Short ea and eo in such words as eall ‘all,’ geard ‘yard,’ seah ‘saw’ and eoh

‘horse,’ meolc ‘milk,’ weorc ‘work’ indicated short diphthongs of similar quality to

the identically written long ones, approximately [æǝ] and [ɛǝ]. In early Old English,

there were other diphthongs written ie and io, but they had disappeared by the time

of classical Old English, being replaced usually by y and eo, respectively.

Consonants

The consonant letters in Old English were b, c, d, f, g, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, þ or ð,

w, x, and z. (The letters j, q, and v were not used for writing Old English, and y

was always a vowel.) The symbols b, d, k (rarely used), l, m, n, p, t, w (which

had a much different shape, namely, ƿ), and x had the values these letters typically

represent in Modern English.

The sound represented by c depended on contiguous sounds. Before another con-

sonant, c was always [k], as in cnāwan ‘to know,’ cræt ‘cart,’ and cwellan ‘to kill.’ If

c was next to a back vowel, it was also [k], as in camp ‘battle,’ corn ‘corn,’ cūð

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‘known,’ lūcan ‘to lock,’ acan ‘to ache,’ bōc ‘book.’ If it was next to a front vowel (or

one that had been front in early Old English), the sound indicated was [č], as in cild

‘child,’ cēosan ‘to choose,’ ic ‘I,’ lǣce ‘physician,’ rīce ‘kingdom,’ mēce ‘sword.’

To be sure of the pronunciation of Old English c, it is often necessary to know

the history of the word in which it appears. In cēpan ‘to keep,’ cynn ‘race, kin,’ and

a number of other words, the first vowels were originally back ones (Germanic

*kōpyan, *kunyō), so the original [k] did not palatalize into [č], as it did before

front vowels. Later, these originally back vowels mutated into front ones under

the influence of the following y, but that was after the time of the palatalization of

[k] to [č].

Mutation is a change in a vowel sound caused by a sound in the following syl-

lable. The mutation of a vowel by a following i or y (as in the examples above) is

called i-mutation or i-umlaut. In bēc ‘books’ from prehistoric Old English *bōci

and sēcan ‘to seek’ from prehistoric Old English *sōcyan, the immediately following

i and y brought about both palatalization of the original [k] (written c in Old

English) and mutation of the original vowel. Thus, they were pronounced [be:č]

and [se:čɑn]. For the latter word, Old English scribes frequently wrote secean, the

extra e functioning merely as a diacritic to indicate that the preceding c symbolized

[č] rather than [k]. Compare the Italian use of i after c preceding a, o, or u to indi-

cate precisely the same thing, as in ciao ‘goodbye’ and cioccolata ‘chocolate.’

In swylc ‘such,’ ælc ‘each,’ and hwylc ‘which,’ an earlier ī before the c has been

lost; but even without this information, we have a guide in the pronunciation of the

modern forms cited as definitions. Similarly we may know from modern keep and

kin that the Old English initial sound was [k]. Unfortunately for easy tests, the

mutated plural of book has not survived (it would be “beech”). Also the [k] in

modern seek probably comes from the Old Norse verb, in which palatalization of

[k] did not happen; the native English form continues in beseech.

The Old English digraphs cg and sc were later replaced by dg and sh, respec-

tively—spellings that indicate to the modern reader exactly the sounds the older

spellings represented, [ǰ] and [š]—for example, ecg ‘edge,’ scīr ‘shire,’ scacan ‘to

shake,’ and fisc ‘fish.’

The pronunciation of g (usually written with a form like g) also depended on

neighboring sounds. In late Old English the symbol indicated the voiced velar stop

[g] before consonants (gnēað ‘niggardly,’ glæd ‘glad, gracious’), initially before back

vowels (galan ‘to sing,’ gōs ‘goose,’ gūð ‘war’), and initially before front vowels that

had resulted from the mutation of back vowels (gēs ‘geese’ from prehistoric Old

English *gōsi, gǣst ‘goest’ from *gāis). In the combination ng (as in bringan ‘to

bring’ and hring ‘ring’), the letter g indicated the same [g] sound—that of Modern

English linger as contrasted with ringer. Consequently, [ŋ] was not a phoneme in

Old English, but merely an allophone of n. There were no contrastive pairs like

sin–sing and thin–thing, nor were there to be any until the Modern English loss of

[g] in what had previously been a consonant sequence [ŋg].

The letter g indicated the semivowel [y] initially before e, i, and the vowel y that

was usual in late West Saxon for earlier ie (gecoren ‘chosen,’ gēar ‘year,’ giftian ‘to

give a woman in marriage,’ gydd ‘song’), medially between front vowels (slægen

‘slain,’ twēgen ‘twain’), and after a front vowel at the end of a syllable (dæg ‘day,’

mægden ‘maiden,’ legde ‘laid,’ stigrāp ‘stirrup,’ manig ‘many’).

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89

In practically all other circumstances g indicated the voiced velar fricative [ɣ]

referred to in Chapter 4 as the earliest Germanic development of Indo-European

gh—a sound difficult for English-speaking people nowadays. It is made like [g]

except that the back of the tongue does not quite touch the velum (dragan ‘to

draw,’ lagu ‘law,’ hogu ‘care,’ folgian ‘to follow,’ sorgian ‘to sorrow,’ swelgan ‘to

swallow’). It later became [w], as in Middle English drawen, lawe, howe, and so on.

In Old English, [v], [z], and [ð ] were not phonemes; they occurred only

between voiced sounds. There were thus no contrastive pairs like feel–veal, leaf–

leave, thigh–thy, mouth (n.)–mouth (v.), seal–zeal, face–phase, and hence there

were no distinctive symbols for the voiceless and voiced sounds. The symbols f, s,

and þ (or ð, the two used more or less interchangeably) thus indicated both the

voiceless fricatives [f], [s], [θ] (as in fōda ‘food,’ lof ‘praise’; sunu ‘son,’ mūs

‘mouse’; þorn ‘thorn,’ pæð ‘path’) and the corresponding voiced fricatives [v], [z],

[ð ] (between voiced sounds, as in cnafa ‘boy,’ hæfde ‘had’; lēosan ‘to lose,’ hūsl

‘Holy Communion’; brōðor ‘brother,’ fæðm ‘fathom’). Some scribes in late Old

English times preferred to write þ initially and ð elsewhere, but generally the letters

were interchangeable. (Note that, although the Old English letter ð could represent

either the voiceless or voiced fricative, the phonetic symbol [ð] represents the voiced

sound only.)

At the beginning of words, r may have been a trill, but after vowels in West

Saxon it was probably similar to the so-called retroflex r that is usual in American

English.

Initial h was about as in Modern English, but elsewhere h stood for the velar

fricative [x] or the palatal fricative [ç], depending on the neighboring vowel. Thus

h was [x] after back vowels in seah ‘saw,’ þurh ‘through,’ and þōhte ‘thought’

(verb), but was [ç] after front vowels in syhð ‘sees,’ miht ‘might,’ and fēhð ‘takes.’

Of the sequences hl (hlāf ‘loaf’), hn (hnitu ‘nit’), hr (hræfn ‘raven’), and hw (hwæl

‘whale’), only the last survives, now less accurately spelled wh, and even in that

combination, the [h] has been lost in the pronunciation of many present-day

English speakers. In Old English, both consonants were pronounced in all these

combinations.

The letter z was rare but when used, it had the value [ts], as indicated by the

variant spellings miltse and milze ‘mercy.’

The doubling of consonant symbols between vowels indicated a double or long

consonant; thus the two t’s of sittan indicated the double or long [t] sound in hot

tamale, in contrast to the single consonant [t] in Modern English hotter. Similarly ll

in fyllan indicated the lengthened medial l of full-length, in contrast to the single or

short l of fully. The cc in racca ‘part of a ship’s rigging’ was a long [k], as in book-

keeper, in contrast to beekeeper, and hence racca was distinguished from raca

‘rake,’ and so on.

Handwriting

The writing of the Anglo-Saxons looked quite different from ours. The chief reason

for the difference is that the Anglo-Saxons learned from the Irish to write in the

Insular hand (as noted earlier). The following sample of that handwriting consists

of the first three lines of the epic Beowulf as an Anglo-Saxon scribe might have

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written it (with some concessions to our practices of using spaces between words,

inserting punctuation, and putting each verse on a separate line):

Hw%t, we gardena in geardagum,

þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,

hu #a æþelingas ellen fremedon!

These lines are transcribed into our alphabet and translated at the end of this

chapter.

Stress

Old English words of more than one syllable, like those in all Germanic languages,

were regularly stressed on their first syllables. Exceptions to this rule were verbs

with prefixes, which were generally stressed on the first syllable of their main ele-

ment: wiðféohtan ‘to fight against,’ onbíndan ‘to unbind.’ Be-, for-, and ge- were

not stressed in any part of speech: bebód ‘commandment,’ forsṓð ‘forsooth,’ gehǽp

‘convenient.’ Compounds had the customary Germanic stress on the first syllable,

with a secondary stress on the first syllable of their second element: lāŕhūś ‘school’

(literally ‘lore house’), híldedēòr ‘fierce in battle.’

This heavy stressing of the first syllable of practically all words has had a

far-reaching effect on the development of English. Because of it, the vowels of final

syllables began to be reduced to a uniform [ə] sound as early as the tenth century,

as frequent interchanges of one letter for another in the texts indicate, though many

scribes continued to spell according to tradition. In general, the stress system of Old

English was simple as compared to that of Modern English, with its many loan-

words of non-Germanic origin, like maternal, philosophy, sublime, and taboo.

VOCABULARY

The vocabulary of Old English differed from that of later historical stages of our

language in two main ways: it included relatively few loanwords, and the gender

of nouns was more or less arbitrary rather than determined by the sex or sexless-

ness of the thing named.

The Germanic Word Stock

The influence of Latin on the Old English vocabulary is treated in Chapter 12 (249–50),

along with the lesser influence of Celtic (252–3) and Scandinavian (253–4). The

Scandinavian influence certainly began during the Old English period, although it is

not apparent until later. Yet, despite these foreign influences, the word stock of Old

English was far more thoroughly Germanic than is our present-day vocabulary.

Many Old English words of Germanic origin were identical, or at least highly

similar, in both form and meaning to the corresponding Modern English words—

for example, god, gold, hand, helm, land, oft, under, winter, and word. Others,

although their Modern English forms continue to be similar in shape, have changed

the old english period (449–1100)

91

drastically in meaning. Thus, Old English brēad meant ‘bit, piece’ rather than

‘bread’; similarly, drēam was ‘joy’ not ‘dream,’ dreorig ‘bloody’ not ‘dreary,’ hlāf

‘bread’ not ‘loaf,’ mōd ‘heart, mind, courage’ not ‘mood,’ scēawian ‘look at’ not

‘show,’ sellan ‘give’ not ‘sell,’ tīd ‘time’ not ‘tide,’ winnan ‘fight’ not ‘win,’ and

wiþ ‘against’ not ‘with.’

Some Old English words and meanings have survived in Modern English only in

disguised form or in set expressions. Thus, Old English guma ‘man’ (cognate with the

Latin word from which we have borrowed human) survives in the compound bride-

groom, literally ‘bride’s man,’ where it has been remodeled under the influence of the

unrelated word groom. Another Old English word for ‘man,’ wer, appears today in

werewolf ‘man-wolf’ and in the archaic wergild ‘man money, the fine to be paid for

killing a person.’ Tīd, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, when used in the prov-

erb “Time and tide wait for no man,” preserves an echo of its earlier sense. Doubtless

most persons today who use the proverb think of it as describing the inexorable rise

and fall of the sea, which mere humans cannot alter; originally, however, time and

tide were just synonyms. Līc ‘body’ continues feebly in compounds like lich-house

‘mortuary’ and lych-gate ‘roofed gate of a graveyard, where a corpse awaits burial,’

and vigorously in the -ly endings of adverbs and some adjectives; what was once an

independent word has been reduced to a suffix marking parts of speech.

Other Old English words have not survived at all: blīcan ‘to shine, gleam,’ cāf

‘quick, bold,’ duguþ ‘band of noble retainers,’ frætwa ‘ornaments, treasure,’ galdor

‘song, incantation,’ here ‘army, marauders (especially Danish ones),’ leax ‘salmon’

(lox is a recent borrowing from Yiddish), mund ‘palm of the hand,’ hence ‘protec-

tion, trust,’ nīþ ‘war, evil, trouble,’ racu ‘account, explanation,’ scēat ‘region, sur-

face of the earth, bosom,’ tela ‘good,’ and ymbe ‘around.’ Some of these words

continued for a while after the Old English period (for example, nīþ lasted through

the fifteenth century in forms like nithe), but they gradually disappeared and were

replaced by other native expressions or, more often, by loanwords.

Old English also made extensive use of compounds that we have now replaced by

borrowing: āþwedd ‘oath-promise, vow,’ bōchord ‘book-hoard, library,’ cræftsprǣc

‘craft-speech, technical language,’ dēorwurþe ‘dear-worth, precious,’ folcriht ‘folk-

right, common law,’ galdorcræft ‘incantation-skill, magic,’ lustbǣre ‘pleasure-bearing,

desirable,’ nīfara ‘new-farer, stranger,’ rīmcræft ‘counting-skill, computation,’ wiþer-

winna ‘against-fighter, enemy.’

If Germanic words like these had continued to our own time and if we had not

borrowed the very great number of foreign words that we have in fact adopted,

English today would be very different.

Gender in Old English

Aside from its pronunciation and its word stock, Old English differs markedly from

Modern English in having grammatical gender in contrast to the Modern English

system of natural gender, based on sex or sexlessness. Grammatical gender, which

put every noun into one of three categories (masculine, feminine, or neuter), was

characteristic of Indo-European, as can be seen from its presence in Sanskrit,

Greek, Latin, and other Indo-European languages. The three genders were pre-

served in Germanic and survived in English well into the Middle English period;

they survive in German and Icelandic to this day.

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Doubtless the gender of a noun originally had nothing to do with sex, nor does

it necessarily have sexual connotations in those languages that have retained gram-

matical gender. Old English wīf ‘wife, women’ is neuter, as is its German cognate

Weib; so is mægden ‘maiden,’ like German Mädchen. Bridd ‘young bird’ is mascu-

line; bearn ‘son, bairn’ is neuter. Brēost ‘breast’ and hēafod ‘head’ are neuter, but

brū ‘eyebrow,’ wamb ‘belly,’ and eaxl ‘shoulder’ are feminine. Strengþu ‘strength’

is feminine, broc ‘affliction’ is neuter, and drēam ‘joy’ is masculine.

Where sex was patently involved, however, this complicated and to us illogical

system was beginning to break down even in Old English times. It must have come

to be difficult, for instance, to refer to one who was obviously a woman—that is, a

wīf—with the pronoun hit ‘it,’ or to a wīfmann—the compound from which our

word woman is derived—with he ‘he,’ the compound being masculine because of

its second element. There are in fact a number of instances in Old English of the

conflict of grammatical gender with the developing concept of natural gender.

GRAMMAR, CONCORD, AND INFLECTION

Grammatical gender is not a matter of vocabulary only; it also has an effect on

grammar through what is called concord. Old English had an elaborate system of

inflection for nouns, adjectives, and verbs; and words that went closely together

had to agree in certain respects, as signaled by their inflectional endings. If a noun

was singular or plural, adjectives modifying it had to be singular or plural as well;

and similarly, if a noun was masculine or feminine, adjectives modifying it had to be

in masculine or feminine forms also. So if Anglo-Saxons wanted to say they had

seen a foolish man and a foolish woman, they might have said, “Wē sāwon sumne

dolne mann ond sume dole idese,” using for sum ‘some’ and dol ‘foolish’ the mas-

culine ending -ne with mann and the feminine ending -e with ides ‘woman.’

The major difference between the grammars of Old English and Modern

English is that our language has become less inflective and more isolating. Old

English used more grammatical endings on words and so was less dependent on

word order and function words than Modern English. These matters are discussed

generally in Chapter 1 and are further illustrated below for Old English.

Inflection

Old English had far more inflection in nouns, adjectives, and demonstrative and

interrogative pronouns than Modern English does. Personal pronouns, however,

have preserved much of their ancient complexity in Modern English and even, in

one respect, increased it.

Old English nouns, pronouns, and adjectives had four cases, used according to

the word’s function in the sentence. The nominative case was used for the subject,

the complement of linking verbs like bēon ‘be,’ and direct address. The accusative

case was used for the direct object, the objects of some prepositions, and certain

adverbial functions (like those of the italicized expressions of duration and direction

in Modern English “They stayed there the whole day, but finally went home”). The

genitive case was used for most of the meanings of Modern English ’s and of

phrases, the objects of a few prepositions and of some verbs, and in certain adver-

bial functions (like the time expression of Modern English “He works nights,” in

the old english period (449–1100)

93

which nights was originally a genitive singular equivalent to “of a night”). The

dative case was used for the indirect object and the only object of some verbs, the

object of many prepositions, and a variety of other functions that can be grouped

together loosely as adverbial (like the time expression of Modern English “I’ll see

you some day”).

Adjectives and the demonstrative and interrogative pronouns had a fifth case,

the instrumental, replaced in nouns by the dative case. A typical example of the

instrumental is the italicized phrase in the following sentence: “Worhte Ælfred cyn-

ing lӯtle werede geweorc” (literally ‘Built Alfred King [with a] little troop [a] work,’

that is, ‘King Alfred by means of a small troop built a fortification’). The final let-

ters -e in the expression for ‘small troop,’ lӯtle werede, mark the adjective as instru-

mental and the noun as dative, used in an instrumental sense. The concord of the

endings of the adjective and noun also showed that the words went together.

Because the instrumental was used to express the means or manner of an action, it

was also used adverbially: “folc þe hlūde singeþ’’ (‘people that loud[ly] sing’).

Adjectives and adverbs were compared much like Modern English fast, faster,

fastest. Adjectives were inflected for definiteness as well as for gender, number,

and case. The so-called weak declension of adjectives was used to indicate that the

modified noun was definite—that it named an object whose identity was known or

expected or had already been mentioned. Generally speaking, the weak form

occurred after a demonstrative or a possessive pronoun, as in “se gōda dǣl” (‘that

good part’) or “hire geonga sunu” (‘her young son’). The strong declension was

used when the modified noun was indefinite because not preceded by a demonstra-

tive or possessive or when the adjective was in the predicate, as in “gōd dǣl” (‘[a]

good part’) or “se dl wæs gōd” (‘that part was good’).

NOUNS

Old English will inevitably seem to the modern reader a crabbed and difficult lan-

guage full of needless complexities. Actually, Old English noun inflection was some-

what less complex than that of Germanic, Latin, and Greek and much less so than

that of Indo-European, which had eight cases (nominative, accusative, genitive,

dative, ablative, instrumental, locative, and vocative). No Old English noun had

more than six distinct forms, counting both singular and plural; but even this num-

ber will seem exorbitant to the speaker of Modern English, who uses only two

forms for all but a few nouns: a general form without ending and a form ending

in -s. The fact that three modern forms ending in -s are written differently is quite

irrelevant; the apostrophe for the genitive is a fairly recent convention. As far as

speech is concerned, guys, guy’s, and guys’ are all the same.

Old English had a large number of patterns for declining its nouns, each of

which is called a declension. Only the most common of the declensions or those

that have survived somehow in Modern English are illustrated here. The most impor-

tant of the Old English declensions was that of the a-stems, so called because a was

the sound with which their stems ended in Proto-Germanic. They corresponded to the

o-stems of Indo-European, as exemplified by nouns of the Greek and Latin second

declensions: Greek philos ‘friend’ and Latin servos (later servus) ‘slave.’ Indo-

European o had become Germanic a (as noted in Chapter 4). The name for the

declension has only historical significance as far as Old English is concerned. For

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example, Germanic *wulfaz (nominative singular) and *wulfan (accusative singular)

had an a in their endings, but both those forms appeared in Old English simply as

wulf ‘wolf,’ having lost the a of their stem as well as the grammatical endings -z and

-n. The a-stems are illustrated in the accompanying table of Old English noun declen-

sions by the masculine hund ‘dog’ and the neuter dēor ‘animal.’

Old English Noun Declensions

Root-

Masculine

Neuter

Consonant

a-Stem

a-Stem

r-Stem

n-Stem

ō-Stem

Stem

‘hound’

‘deer’

‘child’

‘ox’

‘love’

‘foot’

Singular

Nom.

hund

dēor

cild

oxa

lufu

fōt

Acc.

hund

dēor

cild

oxan

lufe

fōt

Gen.

hundes

dēores

cildes

oxan

lufe

fōtes

Dat.

hunde

dēore

cilde

oxan

lufe

fēt

Plural

N.-Ac.

hundas

dēor

cildru

oxan

lufa

fēt

Gen.

hunda

dēora

cildra

oxena

lufa

fōta

Dat.

hundum

dēorum

cildrum

oxum

lufum

fōtum

More than half of all commonly used nouns were inflected according to the

a-stem pattern, which was in time to be extended to practically all nouns. The

Modern English possessive singular and general plural forms in -s come directly

from the Old English genitive singular (-es) and the masculine nominative–accusa-

tive plural (-as) forms—two different forms until very late Old English, when they

fell together because the unstressed vowels had merged as schwa. In Middle English

both endings were spelled -es. Only in Modern English have they again been differ-

entiated in spelling by the use of the apostrophe. Nowadays, new words invariably

conform to what survives of the a-stem declension—for example, hobbits, hobbit’s,

hobbits’—so that we may truly say it is the only living declension.

Neuter a-stems differed from masculines only in the nominative-accusative

plural, which was without an ending in nouns like dēor. Such “endingless plurals”

survive in Modern English for a few words like deer.

A very few neuter nouns, of which cild ‘child’ is an example, had an r in the

plural. Such nouns are known as z-stems in Germanic but r-stems in Old English;

the z, which became r by rhotacism, corresponds to the s of Latin neuters like

genus, which also rhotacized to r in oblique forms like genera. The historically

expected plural of child in Modern English is childer, and that form indeed survives

in the northern dialects of British English. In standard use, however, children

acquired a second plural ending from the nouns discussed in the next paragraph.

An important declension in Old English was the n-stem. Nouns that follow this

pattern were masculine (for example, oxa ‘ox,’ illustrated in the table) or feminine

(such as tunge ‘tongue’); the two genders differed only in the endings for the nomina-

tive singular, -a versus -e. There were also two neuter nouns in the declension, ēage

‘eye’ and ēare ‘ear.’ For a time, -n rivaled -s (from the a-stems) as a typical plural

ending in English. Plurals like eyen ‘eyes,’ fon ‘foes,’ housen ‘houses,’ shoen ‘shoes,’

the old english period (449–1100)

95

and treen ‘trees’ continued well into the Modern English period. The only original

n-plural to survive as standard today, however, is oxen. Children, as noted above,

has its -n by analogy rather than historical development. Similarly brethren and the

poetic kine for ‘cows’ are post–Old English developments. The n-stem pattern is also

sometimes called the weak declension, in contrast with the strong declensions, which

have stems that originally ended in a vowel, such as the a-stems.

Somewhat fewer than a third of all commonly used nouns were feminine, most

of them ō-stems (corresponding to the ā-stems, or first declension, of Latin). In the

nominative singular, these had -u after a short syllable, as in lufu ‘love,’ and no

ending at all after a long syllable, as in lār ‘learning.’ They and a variety of other

smaller classes of nouns are not further considered here because they had no impor-

tant effect on Modern English.

Another declension whose nouns were frequently used in Old English and

whose forms have contributed to the irregularities of Modern English consisted of

the root-consonant stems. In early stages of the language, the case endings of these

nouns were attached directly to their roots without an intervening stem-forming

suffix (like the -a, -r, and -n of the declensions already discussed). The most striking

characteristic of these nouns was the change of root vowel in several of their forms.

This declension is exemplified by the masculine noun fōt ‘foot,’ with dative singular

and the nominative-accusative plural forms fēt.

i-Umlaut

The vowel of a root-consonant stem changes because in prehistoric Old English sev-

eral of the forms of such a stem (which originally had the same root vowel as all its

forms) had an i in their endings. For example, fōt originally had dative singular

*fōti and nominative-accusative plural *fōtiz. Anticipation of the i-sound caused

mutation of the root vowel—a kind of assimilation, with the vowel of the root

moving in the direction of the i-sound, but stopping somewhat short of it, resulting

in *fēti and *fētiz, both later reduced to fēt. English man–men, foot-feet show the

same development as German Mann–Männer, Fuss–Füsse, though German writes

the mutated vowel with a dieresis over the same symbol used for the unmutated

vowel, whereas English uses an altogether different letter. The process, which

Jacob Grimm called umlaut, occurred in different periods and in varying degrees

in the various languages of the Germanic group, in English beginning probably in

the sixth century. The fourth-century Gothic recorded by Bishop Wulfila shows no

evidence of it.

Vowel mutation was originally a phonetic phenomenon only; but after the end-

ings that caused the change had been lost, the mutated vowels served as markers for

the two case forms. Mutation was not a sign of the plural in Old English, because it

occurred also in the dative singular and not all plural forms had it. Only later did it

become a distinctive indication of plurality for those nouns like feet, geese, teeth,

mice, lice, and men that have retained mutated forms into Modern English. Modern

English breeches is a double plural (OE nominative singular brōc ‘trouser,’ nomina-

tive plural brēc), as is the already cited kine (OE nominative singular cū ‘cow,’ nomi-

native plural cӯ with the addition of the plural -n from words like oxen).

Mutation is not limited to nouns. Its effects can be seen also in such pairs as

strong–strength, old–elder, and doom–deem. In all these pairs the second word

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originally had an ending containing an i-sound (either a vowel or its consonantal

equivalent [y]) that caused the mutation of the root vowel but was lost afterwards.

Modern Survivals of Case and Number

In all declensions, the genitive plural form ended in -a. This ending survived as [ǝ]

(written -e) in Middle English in a construction called the “genitive of measure,”

and its effects continue in Modern English (with loss of [ǝ], which dropped away

in all final positions) in such phrases as a sixty-mile drive and six-foot tall (rather

than miles and feet). Though feet may often occur in the latter construction, only

foot is idiomatic in three-foot board and six-foot man. Mile and foot in such

expressions are historically genitive plurals derived from the Old English forms

mīla and fōta, rather than the irregular forms they now appear to be.

The dative plural, which was -um for all declensions, survives in the antiquated

form whilom, from Old English hwīlum ‘at times,’ and in the analogical seldom

(earlier seldan). The dative singular ending -e, characteristic of the majority of Old

English nouns, survives in the word alive, from Old English on līfe. The Old English

voiced f between vowels, later spelled v, is preserved in the Modern English form,

though the final vowel is no longer pronounced.

There are only a very few relics of Old English feminine genitives without -s,

for instance, Lady Chapel and ladybird, for Our Lady’s Chapel and Our Lady’s

bird. The feminine ō-stem genitive singular ended in -e, which was completely lost

in pronunciation by the end of the fourteenth century, along with all other final e’s

of whatever origin.

The forms discussed in these paragraphs are about the only traces left of Old

English noun inflections, other than the plural and genitive singular forms in -s

(along with a few mutated plurals). One of the most significant differences between

Old English and Modern English nouns is that Old English had no device for indi-

cating plurality alone—apart from case. It was not until Middle English times that

the plural nominative-accusative -es (from OE -as) drove out the other case forms of

the plural (save for the comparatively rare genitive of measure construction dis-

cussed above).

MODIFIERS

Demonstratives

There were two demonstratives in Old English. The more frequent was that used

where we might have a definite article; it can be translated as either ‘the’ or ‘that,

those.’ Its forms were as follows:

Masculine

Neuter

Feminine

Plural

Nom.

sē, se

þæt

sēo

þā

Acc.

þone

þæt

þā

þā

Gen.

þæs

þæs

þære

þāra

Dat.

þæm

þæm

þære

þæm

Ins.

þӯ, þon, þē

þӯ, þon, þē

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97

Genders were distinguished only in the singular; in the plural no gender distinc-

tion was made. The masculine and neuter forms were alike in the genitive, dative,

and instrumental. There was no distinct instrumental in the feminine or the plural,

the dative being used in that function instead. By analogy with the other forms of

the word, sē/se and sēo were superseded in late Old English by the variants þē/þe

and þēo.

The Modern English definite article the developed from the masculine nominative

þe, remodeled by analogy from se. When we use the in comparisons, however, as in

“The sooner, the better,” it is a development of the neuter instrumental form þē, the

literal sense being something like ‘By this [much] sooner, by this [much] better.’ The

Modern English demonstrative that is from the neuter nominative-accusative þæt, and

its plural those has been borrowed from the other demonstrative.

The other, less frequently used Old English demonstrative (usually translated

‘this, pl. these’) had the nominative singular forms þēs (masculine), þis (neuter,

whence ModE this), and þēos (feminine). Its nominative-accusative plural, þās, devel-

oped into those and was confused with tho (from þā), the earlier plural of that.

Consequently in Middle English a new plural was developed for this, namely these.

Adjectives

The adjective in Old English, like that in Latin, agreed with the noun it modified in

gender, case, and number; but Germanic, as noted in Chapter 4, had developed a

distinctive adjective declension—the weak declension, used after the two demon-

stratives and after possessive pronouns, which made the following noun definite in

its reference. In this declension -an predominated as an ending, as shown in the fol-

lowing paradigms for se dola cyning ‘that foolish king,’ þæt dole bearn ‘that foolish

child,’ and sēo dole ides ‘that foolish woman.’ Like the demonstratives, weak adjec-

tives did not vary for gender in the plural.

Weak Singular Adjective Declension

Masculine

Neuter

Feminine

Nom.

se dola cyning

þæt dole bearn

sēo dole ides

Acc.

þone dolan cyning

þæt dole bearn

þā dolan idese

Gen.

þæs dolan cyninges

þæs dolan bearnes

þǣre dolan idese

Dat.

þǣm dolan cyninge

þǣm dolan bearne

þǣre dolan idese

Ins.

þӯ dolan cyninge

þӯ dolan bearne

Weak Plural Adjective Declension

Nom., Acc.

þā dolan cyningas, bearn, idesa

Gen.

þāra dolra (or dolena) cyninga, bearna, idesa

Dat.

þǣm dolum cyningum, bearnum, idesum

The strong declension was used when the adjective was not preceded by a

demonstrative or a possessive pronoun and when it was predicative. Paradigms for

the strong adjective in the phrases dol cyning ‘a foolish king,’ dol bearn ‘a foolish

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child,’ and dolu ides ‘a foolish woman’ follow. The genders of the plural forms dif-

fered only in the nominative-accusative.

Strong Singular Adjective Declension

Masculine

Neuter

Feminine

Nom.

dol cyning

dol bearn

dolu ides

Acc.

dolne cyning

dol bearn

dole idese

Gen.

doles cyninges

doles bearnes

dolre idese

Dat.

dolum cyninge

dolum bearne

dolre idese

Ins.

dole cyninge

dole bearne

dolre idese

Strong Plural Adjective Declension

Nom., Acc.

dole cyningas

dolu bearn

dola idesa

Gen.

dolra cyninga

dolra bearna

dolra idesa

Dat.

dolum cyningum

dolum bearnum

dolum idesum

The comparative of adjectives was regularly formed by adding -ra, as in hear-

dra ‘harder,’ and the superlative by adding -ost, as in heardost ‘hardest.’ A few

adjectives originally used the alternative suffixes *-ira, *-ist and consequently had

mutated vowels. In attested Old English they took the endings -ra and -est but

retained mutated vowels—for example, lang ‘long,’ lengra, lengest, and eald ‘old,’

yldra, yldest (Anglian ald, eldra, eldest). A very few others had comparative and

superlative forms from a different root than that of the positive, among them gōd

‘good,’ betra ‘better,’ betst ‘best’ and micel ‘great,’ māra ‘more,’ mǣst ‘most.’

Certain superlatives were formed originally with an alternative suffix -(u)ma—for

example, forma (from fore ‘before’). When the ending with m ceased to be felt as

having superlative force, these words and some others took by analogy the additional

ending -est. Thus double superlatives (though not recognized as such) like formest,

midmest, ūtemest, and innemest came into being. The ending appeared to be -mest

(rather than -est), which even in late Old English times was misunderstood as

‘most’; hence our Modern English forms foremost, midmost, utmost, and inmost, in

which the final syllable is and has long been equated with most, though it has no

historical connection with it. Beginning thus as a blunder, this -most has subsequently

been affixed to other words—for example, uppermost, furthermost, and topmost.

Adverbs

The great majority of Old English adverbs were formed from adjectives by adding the

suffix -e (historically, the instrumental case ending)—for example, wrāþ ‘angry,’ wrāþe

‘angrily.’ This -e was lost along with all other final e’s by the end of the fourteenth cen-

tury, with the result that some Modern English adjectives and adverbs are identical in

form—for instance, loud, deep, and slow—though Modern English idiom sometimes

requires adverbial forms with -ly (“He plunged deep into the ocean” but “He thought

deeply about religious matters”; “Drive slow” but “He proceeded slowly”).

In addition, other case forms of nouns and adjectives might be used adverbially,

notably the genitive and the dative. The adverbial genitive is used in “He hwearf

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99

dæges and nihtes” ‘He wandered of a day and of a night (that is, by day and by

night),’ in which dæges and nihtes are genitive singulars. The construction survives

in “He worked nights” (labeled “dial[ect] and U.S.” by the Oxford English

Dictionary), sometimes rendered analytically as “He worked of a night.” The usage

is, as the OED says, “in later use prob[ably] apprehended as a plural,” though his-

torically, as we have seen, it is not so. The -s of homewards (OE hāmweardes),

towards (tōweardes), besides, betimes, and needs (as in must needs be, sometimes

rendered analytically as must of necessity be) is also from the genitive singular ending

-es. The same ending is merely written differently in once, twice, thrice, hence, and

since. Modern, if archaic, whilom ‘at times, formerly,’ from the dative plural

hwīlum has already been cited, but Old English used other datives similarly.

Adverbs regularly formed the comparative with -or and the superlative with -ost

or -est (wrāþor ‘more angrily,’ wrāþost ‘most angrily’).

PRONOUNS

Personal Pronouns

Except for the loss of the dual number and the old second person singular forms, the

personal pronouns are almost as complex today as they were in Old English times. In

one respect (the two genitive forms of Modern English), they are more complex today.

The Old English forms of the pronouns for the first two persons are as follows:

Singular

Dual

Plural

Nom.

ic ‘I’

wit ‘we both’

wē ‘we all’

Ac.–D.

mē ‘me’

unc ‘us both’

ūs ‘us all’

Gen.

mīn ‘my/mine’

uncer ‘our(s) (both)’

ūre ‘our(s) (all)’

Nom.

þū ‘thou, you’

git ‘you both’

gē ‘ye, you all’

Ac.–D.

þē ‘thee, you’

inc ‘you both’

ēow ‘you all’

Gen.

þīn ‘thy/thine, your(s)’

uncer ‘your(s) (both)’

ēower ‘your(s) (all)’

The dual forms, which were used to talk about exactly two persons, were dis-

appearing even by late Old English times. The second person singular (th-forms)

and the second person plural nominative (ye) survived well into the Modern

English period, especially in religious and poetic language, but they are seldom

used today and almost never with traditional correctness. When used as modifiers,

the genitives of the first and second persons were declined like the strong adjectives.

Gender appeared only in the third person singular forms, exactly as in Modern

English:

Masculine

Neuter

Feminine

Plural

Nom.

hē ‘he’

hit ‘it’

hēo ‘she’

hī ‘they’

Acc.

hine ‘him’

hit ‘it’

hī ‘her’

hī ‘them’

Dat.

him ‘him’

him ‘it’

hire ‘her’

him, heom ‘them’

Gen.

his ‘his’

his ‘its’

hire ‘her(s)’

hire, heora ‘their(s)’

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The masculine accusative hine has survived only in southwestern dialects of

British English as [ǝn], as in “Didst thee zee un?” that is, “Did you see him?”

(OED, s.v. hin, hine).

Modern English she has an unclear history, but it is perhaps a development of

the demonstrative sēo rather than of the personal pronoun hēo. A new form was

needed because hēo became by regular sound change identical in pronunciation

with the masculine he—an obviously unsatisfactory state of affairs. The feminine

accusative hī has not survived.

The neuter hit has survived when stressed, notably at the beginning of a sen-

tence, in some types of nonstandard Modern English. The loss of [h-] in standard

English was due to lack of stress and is paralleled by a similar loss in the other h-

pronouns when they are unstressed, as for example, “Give her his book,” which in

the natural speech of people at all cultural levels would show no trace of either [h]:

“Give ’er ’is book”; compare also “raise her up” and “razor up,” “rub her gloves”

and “rubber gloves.” In the neuter, however, [h] has been lost completely in stan-

dard English, even in writing, whereas in the other h- pronouns we always write the

h, but pronounce it only when the pronoun is stressed. The genitive its is obviously

not a development of the Old English form his, but a new analogical form occur-

ring first in Modern English.

Of the third person plural forms only the dative has survived; it is the regular

spoken, unstressed, objective form in Modern English, with loss of h- as in the

other h- pronouns—for example, “I told ’em what to do.” The Modern English

stressed form them, like they and their, is of Scandinavian origin.

For all the personal pronouns except hit, as well as for the interrogative hwā

‘who,’ considered in the next section, the accusative form has been replaced by

the dative. In the first and second persons, that replacement began very early;

for example, mec, an earlier accusative for the first person singular, had been

lost by the time of classical Old English and its functions assumed by the original

dative mē.

Interrogative and Relative Pronouns

The interrogative pronoun hwā ‘who’ was declined only in the singular and had

only two gender forms:

Masculine/

Feminine

Neuter

Nom.

hwā

hwæt

Acc.

hwone

hwæt

Gen.

hwæs

hwæs

Dat.

hwǣm, hwām

hwǣm, hwām

Ins.

hwǣm, hwām

hwӯ

Hwā is the source of our who, hwām of whom, and hwæt of what. Hwone did

not survive beyond the Middle English period, its functions being taken over by

the dative. Whose is from hwæs with its vowel influenced by who and whom. The

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101

distinctive neuter instrumental hwӯ is the source of our why. Other Old English

interrogatives included hwæðer ‘which of two’ and hwilc ‘which of many.’ They

were both declined like strong adjectives.

Hwā was exclusively interrogative in Old English. The particle þe was the usual

relative pronoun. Since this word had only a single form, it is a great pity that we

ever lost it; it involved no choice such as that which we must make—in writing, at

least—between who and whom, now that these have come to be used as relatives.

Sometimes, however, þe was preceded by the appropriate form of the demonstrative

sē to make a compound relative.

VERBS

Like their Modern English counterparts, Old English verbs were either weak, add-

ing a -d or -t to form their preterits and past participles (as in modern talk-talked),

or strong, changing their stressed vowel for the same purpose (as in modern sing-

sang-sung). Old English had several kinds of weak verbs and seven groups of strong

verbs distinguished by their patterns of vowel change; and it had a considerably

larger number of strong verbs than does Modern English. Old English also had a

fair number of irregular verbs in both the weak and strong categories—grammatical

irregularity being frequent at all periods in the history of language, rather than a

recent “corruption.”

The conjugation of a typical weak verb, cēpan ‘to keep,’ and of a typical strong

verb, helpan ‘to help,’ is as follows:

Present System

Infinitive

Simple

cēpan ‘to keep’

helpan ‘to help’

Inflected

tō cēpenne ‘to keep’

tō helpenne ‘to help’

Indicative

ic

cēpe ‘I keep’

helpe ‘I help’

þū

cēpest ‘you keep’

hilpst ‘you help’

hē, hēo, hit

cēpeþ ‘he, she, it keeps’

hilpþ ‘he, she, it helps’

wē, gē, hī

cēpaþ ‘we, you, they keep’

helpaþ ‘we, you, they help’

Subjunctive

Singular

cēpe ‘I, you, he, she, it keep’

helpe ‘I, you, he, she, it help’

Plural

cēpen ‘we, you, they keep’

helpen ‘we, you, they help’

Imperative

Singular

cēp ‘(you) keep!’

help ‘(you) help!’

Plural

cēpaþ ‘(you all) keep!’

helpaþ ‘(you all) help!’

Participle

cēpende ‘keeping’

helpende ‘helping’

Preterit System

Indicative

ic

cēpte ‘I kept’

healp ‘I helped’

þū

cēptest ‘you kept’

hulpe ‘you helped’

hē, hēo, hit

cēpte ‘he, she, it kept’

healp ‘he, she, it helped’

wē, gē, hī

cēpton ‘we, you, they kept’

hulpon ‘we, you, they helped’

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Subjunctive

Singular

cēpte ‘I, you, he, she, it kept’

hulpe ‘I, you, he, she, it helped’

Plural

cēpten ‘we, you, they kept’

hulpen ‘we, you, they helped’

Past Participle

gecēped ‘kept’

geholpen ‘helped’

Indicative Forms of Verbs

The indicative forms of the verbs, present and preterit, were used for making state-

ments and asking questions; they are the most frequent of the verb forms and the

most straightforward and ordinary in their uses. The Old English preterit was

used for events that happened in the past, and the present tense was used for all

other times, that is, for present and future events and for habitual actions.

In the present indicative, the -t of the second person singular was not a part of

the original ending; it came from the frequent use of þū as an enclitic, that is, an

unstressed word following a stressed word (here the verb) and spoken as if it were

a part of the stressed word. For example, cēpes þū became cēpesþu, then dissimi-

lated to cēpestu, and later lost the unstressed -u.

Subjunctive and Imperative Forms

The subjunctive did not indicate person but only tense and number. The endings

were alike for both tenses: singular -e and plural -en.

The subjunctive was used in main clauses to express wishes and commands:

God ūs helpe ‘(May) God help us’; Ne hēo hundas cēpe ‘She shall not keep dogs.’

It was also used in a wide variety of subordinate clauses, including constructions in

which we still use it: swelce hē tam wǣre ‘as if he were tame.’ But it also occurred

in many subordinate clauses where we would no longer use it: Ic heom sægde þæt

hēo blīðe wǣre ‘I told them that she was happy.’

The imperative singular of cēpan and helpan was without ending, but for some

verbs it ended in -e or -a. As in Modern English, imperatives were used for making

commands.

Nonfinite Forms

In addition to their finite forms (those having personal endings), Old English verbs

had four nonfinite forms: two infinitives and two participles. The simple infinitive

ended in -an for most verbs; for some weak verbs, its ending was -ian (bodian ‘to

proclaim,’ nerian ‘to save’), and for some verbs that underwent contraction, the

ending was -n (fōn ‘to seize,’ gān ‘to go’). The inflected infinitive was a relic of an

earlier time when infinitives were declined like nouns. The two infinitives were

often, but not always, interchangeable. The inflected infinitive was especially used

when the infinitive had a noun function, like a Modern English gerund: Is blīðe tō

helpenne ‘It is joyful to help,’ ‘Helping is joyful.’

The participles were used much like those of Modern English, as parts of verb

phrases and as modifiers. The usual ending of the present participle was -ende. The

ending of the strong past participle, -en, has survived in many strong verbs to the

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103

present day: bitten, eaten, frozen, swollen. The ending of weak past participles, -d

or -t, was, of course, the source for all regular past participle endings in Modern

English. The prefix ge- was fairly general for past participles but occurred some-

times as a prefix in all forms. It survived in the past participle throughout the

Middle English period as y- (or i-), as in Milton’s archaic use in “L’Allegro”: “In

heaven ycleped Euphrosyne . . .” (from OE geclypod ‘called’).

Weak Verbs

There were three main classes of weak verbs in Old English. The three classes

can be illustrated by citing the principal parts for one or two verbs of each class.

Principal parts are forms from which the whole conjugation can be predicted:

Infinitive

Preterit

Past Participle

Class I

fremman ‘to do’

fremede ‘did’

gefremed ‘done’

cēpan ‘to keep’

cēpte ‘kept’

gecēped ‘kept’

Class II

endian ‘to end’

endode ‘ended’

geendod ‘ended’

Class III

habban ‘to have’

hæfde ‘had’

gehæfd ‘had’

secgan ‘to say’

sægde ‘said’

gesægd ‘said’

Many of the weak verbs were originally causative verbs derived from nouns,

adjectives, or other verbs by the addition of a suffix with an i-sound that mutated

the stem vowel of the word. Thus, fyllan ‘to fill, cause to be full’ is from the adjec-

tive full, and settan ‘to set, cause to sit’ is from the verb sæt, the preterit singular of

sittan. Other pairs of words of the same sort are, in their Modern English forms,

feed ‘cause to have food,’ fell ‘cause to fall,’ and lay ‘cause to lie.’

Strong Verbs

Most of the other Old English verbs—all others, in fact, except for a few very fre-

quently used ones discussed in the next two sections—formed their preterits by a

vowel change called gradation (also called ablaut by Jacob Grimm), which was per-

haps due to Indo-European variations in pitch and stress. Gradation is by no means

confined to these strong verbs, but it is best illustrated by them. Gradation should

not be confused with mutation (umlaut), which is the approximation of a vowel

in a stressed syllable to another vowel (or semivowel) in a following syllable.

Gradation, which is much more ancient, is an Indo-European phenomenon com-

mon to all the languages derived from Proto-Indo-European. The vowel gradations

in Modern English ride–rode–ridden, choose–chose, bind–bound, come–came, eat–

ate, and shake–shook are thus an Indo-European inheritance.

Like other Germanic languages, Old English had seven classes of strong verbs.

These classes differed in the vowel alternations of their four principal parts. Like the

Modern English preterit of be, which distinguishes between the singular I was and

the plural we were, most strong verbs had differing stems for their singular and

plural preterits. Had that number distinction survived into present-day English, we

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would be saying I rode but we rid, and I fond but we found. Sometimes the old

singular has survived into current use and sometimes the old plural (and sometimes

neither, but a different form altogether). Examples, one of each of the seven strong

classes and their main subclasses, with their principal parts, follow:

Preterit

Preterit

Past

Infinitive

Singular

Plural

Participle

Class I

wrītan ‘write’

wrāt

writon

gewriten

Class II

(1)

clēofan ‘cleave’

clēaf

clufon

geclofen

(2)

scūfan ‘shove’

scēaf

scufon

gescofen

(3)

frēosan ‘freeze’

frēas

fruron

gefroren

Class III

(1)

drincan ‘drink’

dranc

druncon

gedruncen

(2)

helpan ‘help’

healp

hulpon

geholpen

(3)

ceorfan ‘carve’

cearf

curfon

gecorfen

Class IV

beran ‘bear’

bær

bǣron

geboren

Class V

(1)

sprecan ‘speak’

spræc

sprǣcon

gesprecen

(2)

gifan ‘give’

geaf

gēafon

gegifen

Class VI

scacan ‘shake’

scōc

scōcon

gescacen

Class VII

(1)

cnāwan ‘know’

cnēow

cnēowon

gecnāwen

(2)

hātan ‘be called’

hēt

hēton

gehāten

The change from s to r in the last two principal parts of the class II (3) verb

frē osan was the result of Verner’s Law. The Indo-European accent was on the end-

ing of these forms rather than on the stem of the word, as in the first two principal

parts, thus creating the necessary conditions for the operation of Verner’s Law. The

consonant alternation is not preserved in Modern English.

Preterit-Present Verbs

Old English had a few verbs that were originally strong but whose strong preterit

had come to be used with a present-time sense; consequently, they had to form new

weak preterits. They are called preterit-present verbs and are the main source for

the important group of modal verbs in Modern English. The following are ones

that survive as present-day modals:

Infinitive

Present

Preterit

āgan ‘owe’

āh

āhte (ought)

cunnan ‘know how’

cann (can)

cūðe (could)

magan ‘be able’

mæg (may)

meahte (might)

*mōtan ‘be allowed’

mōt

mōste (must)

sculan ‘be obliged’

sceal (shall)

sceolde (should)

Although not a part of this group in Old English, the verb willan ‘wish, want,’

whose preterit was wolde, also became a part of the present-day modal system as

will and would.

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105

Suppletive Verbs

It is not surprising that frequently used verbs develop irregularities. Bēon ‘to be’

was in Old English, as its modern descendant still is, to some extent a badly

mixed-up verb, with alternative forms from several different roots, as follows

(with appropriate pronouns):

(ic) eom or bēo

‘I am’

(þū) eart or bist

‘you (sg.) are’

(hē, hēo, hit) is or bið

‘he, she, it is’

(wē, gē, hī) sindon, sind, sint, or bēoð

‘we, you, they are’

The forms eom, is, and sind(on) or sint were from an Indo-European root *es-,

whose forms *esmi, *esti, and *senti are seen in Sanskrit asmi, asti, and santi and

in Latin sum, est, and sunt. The second person eart was from a different Indo-

European root: *er- with the original meaning ‘arise.’ The Modern English plural

are is from an Anglian form of that root. The forms beginning with b were from a

third root *bheu-, from which came also Sanskrit bhavati ‘becomes’ and Latin fuī

‘have been.’ The preterit forms were from yet another verb, whose infinitive in Old

English was wesan (a class V strong verb):

(ic) wæs

(þū) wǣre

(hē, hēo, hit) wæs

(wē, gē, hī) wǣron

The alternation of s and r in the preterit was the result of Verner’s Law. Thus

the Old English verb for ‘be’ (like its Modern English counterpart) combined forms

of what were originally four different verbs—seen in the present-day forms be, am,

are, was. Paradigms which thus combine historically unrelated forms are called

suppletive.

Another suppletive verb is gān ‘go,’ whose preterit ēode was doubtless from the

same Indo-European root as the Latin verb ēo ‘go.’ Modern English has lost the

ēode preterit but has found a new suppletive form for go in went, the irregular pret-

erit of wend (compare send–sent). Also irregular, although not suppletive, is dōn

‘do’ with the preterit dyde ‘did.’

It is notable that to be alone has preserved distinctive singular and plural pret-

erit forms (was and were) in standard Modern English. Nonstandard speakers have

carried through the tendency that has reduced the preterit forms of all other verbs

to a single form, and they get along very nicely with you was, we was, and they

was, which are certainly no more inherently “bad” than you sang, we sang, and

they sang—for sung in the plural would be the historically “correct” development

of Old English gē, wē, hī sungon.

SYNTAX

Old English syntax has an easily recognizable kinship with that of Modern English.

There are, of course, differences—and some striking ones—but they do not disguise

the close similarity between an Old English sentence and its Modern English

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counterpart. Many of those differences have already been treated in this chapter,

but they may be summarized as follows:

1. Nouns, adjectives, and most pronouns had fuller inflection for case than their

modern developments do; the inflected forms were used to signal a word’s

function in its sentence.

2. Adjectives agreed in case, number, and gender with the nouns they modified.

3. Adjectives were also inflected for “definiteness” in the so-called strong and

weak declensions.

4. Numbers could be used either as we use them, to modify a noun, as in þrītig

scyllingas ‘thirty shillings,’ or as nominals, with the accompanying word in the

genitive case, as in þrītig rihtwīsra, literally ‘thirty of righteous men.’ Such use

of the genitive was regular with the indeclinable noun fela ‘much, many’: fela

goldes ‘much [of] gold’ or fela folca ‘many [of] people.’

5. Old English used the genitive inflection in many circumstances that would call

for an of phrase in Modern English—for example, þæs īglandes micel dǣl ‘a

great deal of the island,’ literally, ‘that island’s great deal.’

6. Old English had no articles, properly speaking. Where we would use a definite

article, the Anglo-Saxons often used one of the demonstratives (such as se

‘that’ or þes ‘this’); and, where we would use an indefinite article, they some-

times used either the numeral ān ‘one’ or sum ‘a certain.’ But all of those

words had stronger meanings than the Modern English definite and indefinite

articles; thus frequently Old English had no word at all where we would expect

an article.

7. Although Old English could form verb phrases just as we do by combining the

verbs for ‘have’ and ‘be’ with participles (as in Modern English has run and is

running), it did so less frequently, and the system of such combinations was

less fully developed. Combinations using both those auxiliary verbs, such as

has been running, did not occur in Old English, and one-word forms of the

verb (like runs and ran) were used more often than today. Thus, although Old

and Modern English are alike in having just two inflected tenses, the present

and the preterit, Old English used those tenses to cover a wider range of

meanings than does Modern English, which has frequent recourse to verb

phrases. Old English often relied on adverbs to convey nuances of meaning

that we would express by verb phrases; for example, Modern English He had

come corresponds to Old English Hē ǣr cōm, literally ‘He earlier came.’

8. Old English formed passive verb phrases much as we do, but it often used the

simple infinitive in a passive sense as we do not—for example, Hēo hēht hine

lǣran ‘She ordered him to be taught,’ literally ‘She ordered him to teach’ but

meaning ‘She ordered (someone) to teach him,’ in which hine ‘him’ is the

object of the infinitive lǣran ‘to teach,’ not of the verb hēht ‘ordered.’ Another

Old English alternative for the Modern English passive was the indefinite pro-

noun man ‘one,’ as in Hine man hēng ‘Him one hanged,’ that is, ‘He was

hanged.’

9. The subjunctive mood was more common in Old English. It was used, for

example, after some verbs that do not require it in Modern English, as in

Sume men cweðaþ þæt hit sӯ feaxede steorra ‘Some men say that it [a comet]

be a long-haired star.’ It is also used in constructions where conservative

the old english period (449–1100)

107

present-day usage has it: swilce hē wǣre ‘as if he were’ or þēah hē ealne mid-

dangeard gestrӯne ‘though he [the] whole world gain.’

10. Old English had a number of impersonal verbs that were used without a sub-

ject: Mē lyst rǣdan ‘[It] pleases me to read’ and Swā mē þyncþ ‘So [it] seems to

me.’ The object of the verb (in these examples, mē) comes before it and in the

second example gave rise to the now archaic expression methinks (literally ‘to

me seems’), which the modern reader is likely to misinterpret as an odd com-

bination of me as subject of the present-day verb think.

11. The subject of any Old English verb could be omitted if it was implied by the

context, especially when the verb followed a clause that expressed the subject:

Hē þē æt sunde oferflāt, hæfde māre mægen ‘He outstripped you at swimming,

[he] had more strength.’

12. On the other hand, the subject of an Old English verb might be expressed

twice—once as a pronoun at its appropriate place in the structure of the sen-

tence and once as a phrase or clause in anticipation: And þā þe þǣr tō lāfe

wǣron, hī cōmon to þæs carcernes dura ‘And those that were there as survi-

vors, they came to that prison’s door.’ This construction occurs in Modern

English but is often considered inelegant; it is frequent in Old English.

13. The Old English negative adverb ne came before (rather than after) the verb it

modified: Ic ne dyde ‘I did not.’ Consequently it contracted with certain fol-

lowing verbs: nis (ne is ‘is not’), nille (ne wille ‘will not’), næfþ (ne hæfþ ‘has

not’); contrast the Modern English contraction of not with certain preceding

verbs: isn’t, won’t, hasn’t.

14. Old English word order was somewhat less fixed than that of Modern English

but in general was similar. Old English declarative sentences tended to fall into

the subject-verb-complement order usual in Modern English—for example, Hē

wæs swīðe spēdig man ‘He was a very successful man’ and Eadwine eorl cōm

mid landfyrde and drāf hine ūt ‘Earl Edwin came with a land army and drove

him out.’ However, declarative sentences might have a pronoun object before

the verb instead of after it: Se hālga Andreas him andswarode ‘The holy

Andrew him answered.’ (Notice also the order of objects in the sentences in

numbered paragraph 8 above.) When a sentence began with þā ‘then, when’ or

ne ‘not,’ the verb usually preceded the subject: Þā sealde se cyning him sweord

‘Then gave the king him a sword’; Ne can ic nōht singan ‘Not can I nought

sing [I cannot sing anything].’ In dependent clauses the verb usually came last,

as it does also in Modern German: God geseah þā þæt hit gōd wæs ‘God saw

then that it good was’; Sē micla here, þe wē gefyrn ymbe sprǣcon . . . ‘The

great army, which we before about spoke. . . .’ Old English interrogative sen-

tences had a verb-subject-complement order, but did not use auxiliary verbs as

Modern English does: Hæfst þū ǣnigne gefēran? ‘Hast thou any companion?’

rather than ‘Do you have any companion?’

15. Old English had a variety of ways of subordinating one clause to another, but it

favored what grammarians call parataxis—the juxtaposing of clauses without a

conjunction, although the adverb ðā was often used. These three clauses describe

how Orpheus lost his wife, Eurydice, in an Old English retelling of the Greek

legend: Đā hē forð on ðæt leoht cōm, ðā beseah he hine under bæc wið ðæs

wīfes; ðā losode hēo him sōna ‘Then he forth into that light came, then looked he

him backward toward that woman; then slipped she from him immediately.’

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A good many other syntactic differences could be listed; if all of them were, the

resulting list would suggest that Old English was far removed in structure from its

modern development. But the suggestion would be misleading, for the two stages of

the language are much more united by their similarities than divided by their

differences.

OLD ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED

The first two of the following passages in late West Saxon are from a translation of

the Old Testament by Ælfric, the greatest prose writer of the Old English period.

The opening verses from Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis are printed here from the edi-

tion of the Early English Text Society (O.S. 160), with abbreviations expanded,

modern punctuation and capitalization added, some obvious scribal errors cor-

rected, and a few unusual forms regularized. The third passage is the parable of

the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), edited by Walter W. Skeat (The Holy Gospels in

Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian, and Old Mercian Versions), also slightly regularized.

The fourth passage consists of the opening and closing lines of the epic poem

Beowulf.

I. Genesis 1.1–5.

1. On

angynne gescēop God heofonan and eorðan. 2. Sēo eorðe

In [the] beginning created God heavens

and earth.

The earth

wæs sōðlīce īdel and ǣmtig, and þēostra

wǣron ofer ðǣre

was truly

void and empty, and darknesses were

over the

nywelnysse brādnysse; and Godes gāst wæs geferod ofer

wæteru.

abyss’s

surface;

and God’s spirit was brought over [the] water.

3. God cwæð ðā:

Gewurðe lēoht, and lēoht wearð geworht. 4. God

God said

then: Be

light, and light was

made.

God

geseah ðā

ðæt hit gōd wæs, and hē tōdǣlde ðæt lēoht fram ðam

saw

then that it good was, and he divided the light from the

ðēostrum. 5. And hēt

ðæt lēoht dæg and þā ðēostru niht: ðā

darkness.

And called the light day and the darkness night: then

wæs geworden ǣfen

and morgen ān dæg.

was made

evening and morning one day.

II. Genesis 2.1–3.

1. Eornostlīce ðā

wǣron fullfremode heofonas and eorðe and

Indeed

then were

completed heavens and earth and

eall heora frætewung. 2. And God ðā

gefylde on ðone seofoðan dæg

all their ornaments.

And God then finished on the

seventh

day

the old english period (449–1100)

109

fram eallum ðām weorcum ðe hē gefremode. 3. And God geblētsode

from all

the works

that he made.

And God blessed

ðone seofoðan dæg and hine gehālgode, for ðan ðe hē on ðone dæg

the

seventh

day and it

hallowed, because

he on that day

geswāc

his weorces, ðe

hē gescēop tō wyrcenne.

ceased from his work,

that he made

to be done.

III. Luke 15.11–17, 20–24.

11. Sōðlice sum

man hæfde twēgen suna. 12. Þā

cwæð se

Truly a certain man had

two

sons.

Then said

the

gingra

tō his fæder, “Fæder, syle mē mīnne dǣl

mīnre ǣhte

younger to his father, “Father, give me my

portion of my inheritance

þe

mē tō gebyreþ.” Þā

dǣlde

hē him

his ǣhta. 13. Đā

that me to belongs.” Then distributed he to him his inheritance. Then

æfter fēawum dagum ealle his þing gegaderode se gingra sunu and

after a few

days

all

his things gathered

the younger son and

fērde wræclīce on feorlen

rīce and forspilde

þǣr his ǣhta,

went abroad

into a distant land and utterly lost there his inheritance,

lybbende on his gǣlsan.

14. Đā

hē hӯ hæfde ealle āmyrrede, þā

living

in his extravagance. When he it had

all

spent,

then

wearð mycel hunger on þām rīce and hē wearð wǣdla. 15. Þā

fērde

came great famine on the land and he was

indigent.

Then went

hē and folgode ānum burhsittendum men þæs

rīces; ðā

sende hē

he and served a

city-dwelling man of that land; then sent

he

hine tō his tūne þæt hē hēolde

his swīn. 16. Đā

gewilnode hē

him to his estate that he should keep his swine.

Then wanted

he

his wambe gefyllan of

þām bēancoddum þe ðā swӯn ǣton, and him

his belly

to fill

with the bean husks

that the swine ate,

and to him

man ne sealde. 17. Þā

beþōhte hē hine

and cwæð, “Ēalā hū

no one gave.

Then thought he to himself and said,

“Alas how

fela

yrðlinga

on mīnes fæder

hūse hlāf

genōhne habbað, and ic

many farm workers in my

father’s house bread enough have,

and I

hēr on hungre forwurðe! . . .”

20. And hē ārās þā

and cōm tō his

here in hunger perish!

. . .”

And he arose then and came to his

fæder. And þā

gӯt þā

hē wæs feorr

his fæder, hē hine geseah and

father. And then yet when he was far from his father, he him saw

and

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wearð mid mildheortnesse āstyred and ongēan hine arn and hine beclypte

became with compassion

stirred and toward him ran and him embraced

and cyste hine.

21. Đā

cwæð his sunu, “Fæder, ic syngode on

and kissed him.

Then said

his son, “Father, I sinned against

heofon and beforan ðē.

Nū

ic ne eom wyrþe þæt ic þīn sunu bēo

heaven and before thee. Now I not am worthy that I thy son be

genemned.”

22. Đā

cwæþ se fæder tō his þēowum, “Bringað hræðe

named.”

Then said

the father to his servants, “Bring

quickly

þone sēlestan gegyrelan and scrӯdað hine, and syllað him hring on his

the

best

garments and clothe

him, and give

him a ring on his

hand and gescӯ tō his fōtum.

23. And bringað ān fǣtt styric and ofslēað,

hand and shoes for his feet.

And bring

a fat calf

and slay (it),

and uton etan and gewistfullian. 24. For þām þēs mīn sunu wæs dēad,

and let us eat and feast.

Because this my son was dead,

and hē geedcucode;

hē forwearð, and hē is gemēt.”

and he returned to life; he was lost, and he is found.”

IV. Beowulf, 1–3, 3178–82.

Hwæt, wē Gār-Dena

in gēardagum,

Lo! we of Spear-Danes

in old days,

þēodcyniga

þrym gefrūnon,

of the people’s kings,

glory have heard,

hū

ðā æþelingas

ellen fremedon!

how the princes

courage accomplished!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .

Swā begnornodon

Gēata lēode

So

lamented

Geats’ people

hlāfordes hryre,

heorð genēatas;

the lord’s fall,

hearth-companions;

cwǣdon þæt hē wǣre

wyruldcyninga

they said that he had been

of world-kings

manna mildest

ond monðwǣrust,

of men mildest

and kindest,

lēodum

līðost

ond lofgeornost.

to people gentlest

and most eager for honor.

the old english period (449–1100)

111

FOR FURTHER READING

General Historical Background

Black. A History of the British Isles.

———. A New History of England.

Morgan. The Oxford History of Britain.

Overviews

Bedingfield. Anglo-Saxon England: A Guide to Online Resources.

Hogg. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 1: The Beginnings to 1066.

Irvine and Everhart. The Labyrinth: Old English.

History and Culture

Drout. Anglo-Saxon Aloud.

Smyth. King Alfred the Great.

Stenton. Anglo-Saxon England.

Welch. Discovering Anglo-Saxon England.

Introductory Textbooks

Baker. Introduction to Old English.

Mitchell and Robinson. A Guide to Old English.

Quirk and Wrenn. An Old English Grammar.

Grammar

Campbell. Old English Grammar.

Drout. King Alfred’s Grammar Book.

Faiss. English Historical Morphology and Word-Formation.

Fischer et al. The Syntax of Early English.

Hogg. A Grammar of Old English.

Mitchell. Old English Syntax.

Lexicon

Barney. Word-Hoard.

Bosworth. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.

Edmonds et al. Thesaurus of Old English.

Hall. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.

Healey. Dictionary of Old English Project.

Roberts and Kay. A Thesaurus of Old English.

±±±±±±±±±±

6

The Middle English

C H A P T E R

±±±±±±± Period (1100–1500)

The beginning and ending dates of the Middle English period, though somewhat

arbitrary, are two points in time when ongoing language changes became particu-

larly noticeable: grammatical changes about 1100 and pronunciation changes about

1500. The term middle indicates that the period was a transition between Old

English (which was grammatically very different from the language that followed)

and early Modern English (which in pronunciation was different from what had

come before but was much the same as our own). The two dates also coincide

approximately with some events in English history that had profound effects on the

language.

SOME KEY EVENTS IN THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD

The following events during the Middle English period significantly influenced the

development of the English language.

• 1066 The Normans conquered England, replacing the native English nobility

with Anglo-Normans and introducing Norman French as the language of

government in England.

• 1204 King John lost Normandy to the French, beginning the loosening of ties

between England and the Continent.

• 1258 King Henry III issued the first English-language royal proclamation

since the Conquest, having been forced by his barons to accept the Provisions

of Oxford, establishing a Privy Council to oversee the administration of the

government, so beginning the growth of the English constitution and

parliament.

• 1337 The Hundred Years’ War began and lasted until 1453, promoting

English nationalism.

• 1348–50 The Black Death killed an estimated one-third of England’s popula-

tion and continued to plague the country for much of the rest of the century.

• 1362 The Statute of Pleadings was enacted, requiring all court proceedings to

be conducted in English.

112

the middle english period (1100–1500)

113

• 1381 The Peasants’ Revolt led by Wat Tyler was the first rebellion of

working-class people against their exploitation. Although it failed in most of its

immediate aims, it marks the beginning of popular protest.

• 1384 John Wycliffe died, having promoted the first complete translation of

scripture into the English language (the Wycliffite Bible).

• 1400 Geoffrey Chaucer died, having produced a highly influential body of

English poetry.

• 1430 The Chancery office (where legal records were deposited) began record-

keeping in a form of East Midland English, which became the written standard

of English.

• 1476 William Caxton brought printing to England, thus promoting literacy

throughout the population.

• 1485 Henry Tudor became king of England, ending thirty years of civil strife,

called the War of the Roses, and introducing 118 years of the Tudor dynasty.

• 1497 John Cabot sailed to Nova Scotia, foreshadowing English territorial

expansion overseas.

THE BACKGROUND OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST

Almost at the end of the Old English period, the Normans invaded and conquered

England—an event more far-reaching in its effects on English culture than the earlier

Scandinavian incursions.

Edward the Confessor was the last king in the direct male line of descent from

Alfred the Great. He died without heirs, and Harold, son of the powerful Earl

Godwin, was elected to the kingship. Almost immediately his possession of the

crown was challenged by William, the seventh duke of Normandy, who was dis-

tantly related to Edward the Confessor and who thought, for a number of tenuous

reasons, that he had a better claim to the throne.

The Norman Conquest—fortunately for Anglo-American culture and civiliza-

tion, the last invasion of England—was, like the earlier Danish invasions, carried

out by Northmen. Under the leadership of William the Conqueror, they defeated

the English and their hapless King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Harold was killed by an arrow that pierced his eye, and the English, deprived of his

effective leadership and that of his two brothers, who had also fallen in the battle,

were ignominiously defeated.

William and the Northmen whose dux he was came not immediately from

Scandinavia but from France, a region whose northern coast their not-very-remote

Viking ancestors had invaded and settled as recently as the ninth and tenth centu-

ries, beginning at about the same time as other pagan Vikings were making trouble

for Alfred the Great in England. Those Scandinavians who settled in France are

commonly designated by an Old French form of Northmen, that is, Normans, and

the section of France that they settled and governed was called Normandy.

The Conqueror was a bastard son of Robert the Devil, who took such pains in

the early part of his life to earn his surname that he became a figure of legend—

among other things, he was accused, doubtless justly, of poisoning the brother

whom he succeeded as duke of Normandy. So great was his capacity for rascality

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that he was also called Robert the Magnificent. Ironically, he died in the course of a

holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Robert’s great-great-grandfather was Rollo (Hrólfr), a Danish chieftain who was

created first duke of Normandy after coming to terms satisfactory to himself with King

Charles the Simple of France. In the five generations intervening between Duke Rollo

and Duke William, the Normans had become French culturally and linguistically, at

least superficially—though we must always remember that in those days the French

had no learning, art, or literature comparable to what was flourishing in England.

English culture changed under French influence, most visibly in the construc-

tion of churches and castles, but it retained a distinctively English flavor. The

Norman French dialect spoken by the invaders developed in England into Anglo-

Norman, a variety of French that was the object of amusement even among the

English in later times, as in Chaucer’s remark about the Prioress, that “she spoke

French quite fair and neatly—according to the school of Stratford-at-Bow, for the

French of Paris was unknown to her.”

THE REASCENDANCY OF ENGLISH

For a long time after the Norman Conquest, England was trilingual. Latin was the

language of the Church, Norman French of the government, and English of the

majority of the country’s population. The loss of Normandy in 1204 by King John,

a descendant of the Conqueror, removed an important tie with France, and subse-

quent events were to loosen the remaining ties. By the fourteenth century, several

things happened that promoted the use of English. The Hundred Years’ War, begin-

ning in 1337, saw England and France bitter enemies in a long, drawn-out conflict

that gave the deathblow to the already moribund use of French in England. Those

whose ancestors were Normans eventually came to think of themselves as English.

In addition, the common people had begun to exercise their collective power.

The Black Death, or bubonic plague, perhaps reinforced by pneumonia, raged dur-

ing the middle of the fourteenth century, killing a third to a half of the population.

It produced a severe labor shortage that led to demands for higher wages and better

treatment of workers. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler and sparked

by a series of poll taxes (fixed taxes on each person), was largely unsuccessful, but

it presaged social changes that were fulfilled centuries later.

Meanwhile, John Wycliffe had challenged the authority of the Church in both

doctrinal and organizational matters as part of a movement called Lollardy (a derog-

atory term for heresy), which translated the Bible into English and popularized

doctrines that anticipated the Reformation. The fourteenth century also saw the devel-

opment of a mystical tradition in England that carried through to the early fifteenth

century and included works still read, such as Richard Rolle’s Form of Perfect Living,

the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Julian (or

Juliana) of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, and even the emotionally autobio-

graphical Book of Margery Kempe, more valuable for its insights into medieval life

than for its spiritual content. Four cycles of mystery plays, which dramatized the his-

tory of the world as recorded in Scripture, and various morality plays such as

Everyman, which allegorized the human struggle between good and evil, were the

forerunners of the great English dramatic tradition from Shakespeare onward.

the middle english period (1100–1500)

115

The late fourteenth century saw a blossoming of alliterative, unrimed English

poetry that was a development of the native tradition of versification stretching

back to Anglo-Saxon times. The most important work of that revival was William

Langland’s Piers Plowman, which echoes much of the intellectual and social fer-

ment of the time. Another important work was the Morte Arthure, an alliterative

account of the life and death of King Arthur that anticipated other works on the

subject, from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (printed by William Caxton

in 1485), through Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859–88), Alan Jay

Lerner and Frederick Leowe’s musical Camelot (1960, film 1967), the movie

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), and into the twenty-first century with

Mike Nichols’s Spamalot (2005). The Star Wars series also continues the theme if

not the plot and characters. The most highly regarded of the alliterative poems was

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which combines courtly romance, chivalric

ideals, moral dilemma, and supernatural folklore. Its anonymous author is known

as the Pearl poet, from the title of another work he wrote.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the greatest poet of Middle English times and one of the

greatest of all times in any language, wrote in both French and English, but his sig-

nificant work is in English. By the time Chaucer died in 1400, English was well

established as the language of England in literary and other uses. By the end of the

fourteenth century, public documents and records began to be written in English,

and Henry IV used English to claim the throne in 1399.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES ON VOCABULARY

During the Middle English period, Latin continued to exert an important influence

on the English vocabulary (Chapter 12, 250–1). Scandinavian loanwords that must

have started making their way into the language during the Old English period

became readily apparent in Middle English (253–4), and Dutch and Flemish were

also significant sources (260–1). However the major new influence, and ultimately

the most important, was French (254–6).

The impact of the Norman Conquest on the English language, like that made by

the earlier Norse-speaking invaders, was largely in the word stock, though Middle

English also showed some instances of the influence of French idiom and grammar.

Suffice it to say that, as a result of the Conquest, English acquired a new look.

Compare the following pairs, in which the first word or phrase is from an Old

English translation of the parable of the Prodigal Son (cited at the end of the last

chapter) and the second is from a Middle English translation (cited at the end of

this chapter):

ǣhta

catel

‘property’

burhsittende man

citeseyn

‘citizen’

dǣl

porcioun

‘portion’

dǣlde

departide

‘divided’

forwearð

perischid

‘perished’

gǣlsa

lecherously

‘lechery, lecherously’

genōh

plente

‘enough, plenty’

gewilnode

coueitide

‘wanted, coveted’

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gewistfullian

make we feeste

‘let us feast’

mildheortness

mercy

‘mercy’

rīce

cuntre

‘country’

þēow

seruaunt

‘servant’

wræclīce

in pilgrymage

‘abroad, traveling’

In each case, the first expression is native English and the second is, or con-

tains, a word borrowed from French. In a few instances, the corresponding

Modern English expression is different from either of the older forms: though

Middle English catel survives as cattle, its meaning has become more specific than

it was; and so has that of Middle English pilgrymage, which now refers to a partic-

ular kind of journey. However, most of the French terms have continued essentially

unchanged in present-day use. The French tincture of our vocabulary, which began

in Middle English times, has been intensified in Modern English.

MIDDLE ENGLISH SPELLING

Consonants

Just as French words were borrowed, so too were French spelling conventions. Yet

some of the apparent innovations in Middle English spelling were, in fact, a return

to earlier conventions. For example, the digraph th had been used in some of the

earliest English texts—those written before 900—but was replaced in later Old

English writing by þ and ð. During the Middle English period, th was gradually

reintroduced, and during early Modern English times printers regularized its use.

Similarly, uu, used for [w] in early manuscripts, was supplanted by the runic

wynn, but was brought back to England by Norman scribes in a ligatured form

as w. The origin of this symbol is accurately indicated by its name, double-u.

Other new spellings were true innovations. The Old English symbol

(which

we transliterate as g) was an Irish shape; the letter shape g entered English writing

later from the Continent. In Middle English times, the Old English symbol acquired

a somewhat different form, ȝ (called yogh), and was used for several sounds, nota-

bly two that came to be spelled y and gh later in the period. The complex history of

these shapes and the sounds they represented is illustrated by the spellings of the

following five words:

Goose

Yield

Draw

Knight

Through

OE:

gōs [g]

geldan [y]

dragan [ɣ]

cniht [ç]

þurh [x]

ME:

goos [g]

ȝelden [y]

drawen [w]

cniȝt [ç]

þurȝ [x]

or yelden

or knight

or thurgh

The symbol yogh (ȝ) was also used to represent -s or -z at the ends of words in

some manuscripts, such as those of the Pearl poet, perhaps because it resembles z in

shape. It continued to be written in Scotland long after the English had given it up,

and printers, having no ȝ in their fonts, used z for it—as in the names Kenzie

the middle english period (1100–1500)

117

(compare Kenny, with revised spelling to indicate a pronunciation somewhat closer

to the historical one) and Menzies (with the Scottish pronunciation [mɪŋgɪs]). The

newly borrowed shape g was used to represent not only [g] in native words, but

also the [ǰ] sound in French loanwords like gem and age, that being the sound

represented by g before e and i of French in earlier times.

The consonant sound [v] did not occur initially in Old English, which used f for

the [v] that developed internally, as in drifen ‘driven,’ hæfde ‘had,’ and scofl

‘shovel.’ Except for a very few words that have entered standard English from

Southern English dialects, in which initial [f] became [v]—for instance, vixen, the

feminine of vox ‘fox’—no standard English words of native origin begin with [v].

Practically all our words with initial v have been taken from Latin or French. No matter

how familiar such words as vulgar (Latin), vocal (Latin), very (French), and voice

(French) may be to us now, they were originally foreign. The introduction of the

letter v (a variant of u) to indicate the prehistoric Old English development of [f] to [v]

was an innovation of Anglo-Norman scribes in Middle English times: thus the Middle

English form of Old English drifen was written driven or driuen.

When v, the angular form of curved u, came to be used in Middle English,

scribes followed the Continental practice of using either symbol for either conso-

nant or vowel. As a general rule, v was used initially and u elsewhere, regardless

of the sound indicated, as in very, vsury (usury), and euer (ever), except in the

neighborhood of m and n, where for the sake of legibility v was frequently used

for the vowel regardless of position.

Ch was used under French influence, to indicate the initial sound of child,

which in Old English had been spelled simply with c, as in cild. Following a short

vowel, the same sound might also be spelled cch or chch; thus catch appears as

cache, cacche, and cachche.

In early Old English times sc symbolized [sk], but during the course of the Old

English period the graphic sequence came to indicate [š]. The sh spelling for that

sound was an innovation of Anglo-Norman scribes (OE sceal—ME and ModE

shall); the scribes sometimes used s, ss, and sch for the same purpose.

Middle English scribes preferred the spelling wh for the phonetically more accu-

rate hw used in Old English times, for example, in Old English hwæt—Middle and

Modern English what.

Under French influence, scribes in Middle English times used c before e and i

(y) in French loanwords, for example, citee ‘city’ and grace. In Old English writing

c never indicated [s], but only [k] and [č]. Thus, with the introduction of the newer

French value, c remained an ambiguous symbol, though in a different way: it came

to represent [k] before a, o, u, and consonants, and [s] before e, i, and y. K, used

occasionally in Old English writing, thus came to be increasingly used before e, i,

and y in Middle English times (OE cynn ‘race’—ME kin, kyn).

French scribal practices are responsible for the Middle English spelling qu

(which French inherited from Latin), replacing Old English cw, as in quellen ‘to

kill’ and queen, which despite their French look are native English words (in Old

English, cwellan and cwēn).

Also French in origin is the digraph gg for [ǰ], supplanting in medial and final

positions Old English cg (OE ecg—ME egge), later written dg(e), as in Modern

English edge.

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Vowels

To indicate vowel length, Middle English writing frequently doubled letters, partic-

ularly ee and oo, the practice becoming general in the East Midland dialect late in

the period. These particular doublings have survived into our own day, though they

do not indicate the same sounds as in Middle English. As a matter of fact, both ee

and oo were ambiguous in the Middle English period, as every student of Chaucer

must learn. One of the vowel sounds indicated by Middle English ee (namely [ɛ:])

came generally to be written ea in the course of the sixteenth century; for the other

sound (namely [e:]), ee was retained, alongside ie and, less frequently, ei—spellings

that were also used to some extent in Middle English.

Double o came to be commonly used in later Middle English times for the

long rounded vowel [ɔ:], the vowel that developed out of Old English long ā.

Unfortunately for the beginning student, the same double o was used for the con-

tinuation of Old English long ō. As a result of this duplication, rood ‘rode’ (OE

rād) and rood ‘rood, cross’ (OE rōd) were written with identical vowel symbols,

though they were no more nearly alike in pronunciation ([rɔ:d] and [ro:d] respec-

tively) than are their modern forms.

Because [ɛ:] and [ɔ:] are both lower vowels than [e:] and [o:] and thus are made

with the mouth in a more open position, they are called open e and open o, as distinct

from the second pair, which are close e and close o. In modern transcriptions of

Middle English spelling, the open vowels may be indicated by a subscript hook

under the letter: ˉę for [ɛ:] and ǭ for [ɔ:], whereas the close vowels are left unmarked

except for length: ē for [e:] and ō for [o:]. The length mark and the hook are both mod-

ern scholarly devices to indicate pronunciation; they were not used by scribes in

Middle English times, and the length mark is unnecessary when a long vowel is spelled

with double vowel letters, which indicate the extra length of the sound.

Final unstressed e following a single consonant also indicated vowel length in

Middle English, as in fode ‘food’ and fede ‘to feed’; this corresponds to the “silent

e” of Modern English, as in case, mete, bite, rote, and rule. Doubled consonants,

which indicated consonant length in earlier periods, began in Middle English times

to indicate also that a preceding vowel was short. Surviving examples are dinner

and bitter, as contrasted with diner and biter. In the North of England, i was fre-

quently used after a vowel to indicate that it was long, a practice responsible for

such modern spellings as raid (literally a ‘riding,’ from the OE noun rād), Reid (a

long-vowel variant of red, surviving only as a proper name), and Scots guid ‘good,’

as in Robert Burns’s “Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous.”

Short u was commonly written o during the latter part of the Middle English

period if i, m, n, or u (v, w) were contiguous, because those stroke letters were

made with parallel slanting lines and so, when written in succession, could not be

distinguished. A Latin orthographical joke about “minimi mimi” (‘very small

mimes or dwarf actors’) was written solely with those letters and consequently

was illegible. The Middle English spellings sone ‘son’ and sonne ‘sun’ thus indicate

the same vowel sound [ʊ] that these words had in Old English, when they were

written respectively sunu and sunne. The spelling o for u survives in a number of

Modern English words besides son—for example, come (OE cuman), wonder

(OE wundor), monk (OE munuc), honey (OE hunig), tongue (OE tunge), and love

the middle english period (1100–1500)

119

(OE lufu), the last of which, if it had not used the o spelling, would have been writ-

ten luue (as indeed it was for a time).

The French spelling ou came to be used generally in the fourteenth century to

represent English long ū—for example, hous (OE hūs). Before a vowel the u of the

digraph ou might well be mistaken as representing [v], for which the same symbol

was used. To avoid confusion (as in douer, which was a possible writing for both

dower and Dover), u was doubled in this position—that is, written uu, later w. This

use of w, of course, would have been unnecessary if u and v had been differentiated

as they are now. W came to be used instead of u also in final position.

Middle English scribes used y for the semivowel [y] and also, for the sake of

legibility, as a variant of i in the vicinity of stroke letters—for example, myn hom-

comynge ‘my homecoming.’ Late in the Middle English period there was a tendency

to write y for long ī generally. Y was also regularly used in final position.

Middle English spelling was considerably more relaxed than present-day

orthography. The foregoing remarks describe some of the spelling conventions of

Middle English scribes, but there were a good many others, and all of them were

used with a nonchalance that is hardly imaginable after the introduction of the

printing press. Within a few lines, a scribe might spell both water and watter, treese

and tres ‘trees,’ nakid and nakyd, eddre and edder ‘adder,’ moneth and moneþ

‘month,’ clowdes and cloudeȝ ‘clouds,’ as did the scribe who copied out a manu-

script of the Wycliffite Bible. The notion that every word has, or ought to have,

just one correct spelling is relatively recent and certainly never occurred to our

medieval ancestors.

THE RISE OF A LONDON STANDARD

Middle English had a diversity of dialects. Its Northern dialect corresponds roughly

to Old English Northumbrian, its southern boundary on the eastern coast being

also the Humber estuary. Likewise, the Midland dialects, subdivided into East

Midland and West Midland, correspond roughly to Old English Mercian. The

Southern dialect, spoken south of the Thames, similarly corresponds roughly to

West Saxon, with Kentish a subdivision.

It is not surprising that London speech—essentially East Midland in its charac-

teristics, though showing Northern and to a less extent Southern influences—should

in time have become a standard for all of England. London had for centuries been a

large (by medieval standards), prosperous, and hence important city.

Until the late fifteenth century, however, authors wrote in the dialect of their

native regions. The authors of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Piers

Plowman wrote in the West Midland dialect; the authors of The Owl and the

Nightingale, the Ancrene Riwle, and the Ayenbite of Inwit wrote in the Southern

dialect (including Kentish); the author of the Bruce wrote in the Northern dialect;

and John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in the East Midland dialect, specifi-

cally the London variety of East Midland. Standard Modern English—both

American and British—is a development of the speech of London. This dialect

had become the norm in general use long before the English settlement of

America in the early seventeenth century, though many of those who migrated to

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the New World retained traces of their regional origins in their pronunciation,

vocabulary, and to a lesser degree syntax. Rather than speaking purely local dia-

lects, most used a type of speech that was essentially that of London, with regional

shadings.

BRITAIN IN MIDDLE ENGLISH TIMES

The London origin of our English means that the language of Chaucer and

Gower is much easier for us to comprehend at first sight than, say, the Northern

speech (specifically lowland Scots) of their contemporary John Barbour, author of

the Bruce. In the following lines from Chaucer’s House of Fame, for instance, an

erudite eagle explains to Chaucer what speech really is:

Soune ys noght but eyre ybroken

And every spech that ys yspoken,

Lowde or pryvee, foule or faire,

In his substaunce ys but aire;

5

For as flaumbe ys but lyghted smoke,

Ryght soo soune ys aire y-broke.

But this may be in many wyse,

Of which I wil the twoo devyse:

Of soune that cometh of pipe or harpe.

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121

10

For when a pipe is blowen sharpe

The aire ys twyst with violence

And rent. Loo, thys ys my sentence.

Eke, when men harpe strynges smyte,

Whether hyt be moche or lyte,

15

Loo, with the stroke the ayre to-breketh

And right so breketh it when men speketh:

Thus wost thou wel what thinge is speche.

Now compare Chaucer’s English, much like our own, with that of the following

excerpt from the Bruce:

Þan wist he weill þai wald him sla,

And for he wald his lord succour

He put his lif in aventur

And stud intill a busk lurkand

5

Quhill þat þe hund com at his hand,

And with ane arrow soyn hym slew

And throu the wod syne hym withdrew.

Scots needs to be translated to be easily understood:

Then he knew well they wished to slay him,

And because he wished to succor his lord

He put his life in fortune’s hands

And stood lurking in a bush

5

While the hound came to his hand,

And with one arrow immediately slew him

And through the wood afterward withdrew himself.

Distinctively Northern forms in this passage are slā (corresponding to East

Midland slee), wald (E. Midl. wolde[n]), stud (E. Midl. sto[o]d), weill (in which

the i indicates length of the preceding e), lurkand (E. Midl. lurking), quhīll

(E. Midl. whӯl), āne (E. Midl. oon [ɔ:n]), intill (E. Midl. intō), and syne (E. Midl.

sith). Soyn ‘soon, immediately’ is merely a matter of spelling: the y, like the i in

weill, indicates length of the preceding vowel, and not a pronunciation of the

vowel different from that indicated by the usual East Midland spelling sone. The

nominative form of the third person plural pronoun, þai ‘they,’ was adopted in

the North from Scandinavian and gradually spread into the other dialects. The

oblique forms (that is, non-nominative cases) their and them were not generally

used in London English or in the Midland and South at this time, though they

were common enough in the North. Chaucer uses they for the nominative, but he

retains the native forms here (or hire) and hem as oblique forms. A Northern char-

acteristic not illustrated in the passage cited is the -es, -is, or -ys verb ending of the

third person singular and all plural forms of the present indicative (he redys ‘he

reads,’ thai redys ‘they read’). Also Northern, but not occurring in the passage, is

the frequent correspondence of k to the ch of the other dialects, as in birk–birch,

kirk–chirche, mikel–michel ‘much,’ and ilk–eech ‘each.’

Throughout this chapter, the focus of attention is on London speech, which is

the ancestor of standard Modern English, rather than on other dialects like that of

the Bruce.

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CHANGES IN PRONUNCIATION

Principal Consonant Changes

Throughout the history of English, consonants have remained relatively stable, com-

pared with the notable vowel changes that have occurred. The Old English consonant

sounds written b, c (in both its values in late Old English, [k] and [č]), d, f (in both its

values, [f] and [v]), ȝ (in two of its values, [g] and [y]), h (in both its values, [h] and

[x]), k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, þ (ð), w, and x (that is, [ks]) remained unchanged in Middle

English. Important spelling differences occur, however, most of them due to Anglo-

Norman influence. They have been treated earlier in this chapter.

The more important changes in consonant sounds, other than the part played

by g in the formation of new diphthongs (124-5), may be summarized as follows:

1. The Old English sequences hl, hn, and hr (as in hlēapan ‘to leap,’ hnutu ‘nut,’

and hraðor ‘sooner’) were simplified to l, n, and r (lˉępen, nute, rather). To

some extent hw, written wh in Middle English, was also frequently reduced to

w, at least in the Southern dialect. In the North, however, the h in this

sequence was not lost. It survives to this day in some types of English, includ-

ing the speech of parts of the United States. The sequence was frequently

written qu and quh in Northern texts.

2. The Old English voiced velar fricative g after l or r became w, as in halwen ‘to

hallow’ (OE halgian) and morwe(n) ‘morrow’ (OE morgen).

3. Between a consonant, particularly s or t, and a back vowel, w was lost, as in

sǭ (OE swā) and tō ‘two’ (OE twā). Since Old English times it had been lost

in various negative contractions regardless of what vowel followed, as in

Middle English nil(le) from ne wil(le), nǭt from ne wǭt, nas from ne was, and

niste from ne wiste (in which the w was postconsonantal because of elision

of the e of ne). Nille survives in willy-nilly. A number of spellings with “silent

w” continue to occur—for example, two, sword, and answer (early ME

andswarien).

4. In unstressed syllables, -ch was lost in late Middle English, as in -ly (OE -lic).

The form ī for the first person nominative singular pronoun is a restressing of

the simple i that remained of ich (OE ic) after this loss.

5. Before a consonant, sometimes with syncope of an unstressed vowel, v was lost

in a few words like hˉęd (by way of hˉęvd, hˉęved, from OE hēafod), lǭrd (lǭverd,

OE hlāford), hast, hath, and had (OE hæfst, hæfð, and hæfde).

6. The Old English prefix ge- became i- (y-), as in iwis ‘certain’ (OE gewiss) and

ilimpen ‘to happen’ (OE gelimpan).

7. Final inflectional n was gradually lost, as was the final n of the unstressed

possessive pronouns mīn and þīn and of the indefinite article before a consonant:

compare Old English mīn fæder ‘my father’ with Middle English mӯ fader

(but mӯn eye ‘my eye’). This loss of -n is indirectly responsible for a newt

(from an ewte) and a nickname (from an ekename ‘an also-name’), where the n

of the indefinite article has attached itself to the following word. In umpire

(ME noumpere), adder (ME nadder, compare German Natter ‘snake’), auger

(ME nauger), and apron (ME napron, compare napkin, napery ‘table linen’)

just the opposite has happened: the n of the noun attached itself to the article.

the middle english period (1100–1500)

123

8. In the Southern dialect, including Kentish, initial f, s, and doubtless þ as well,

were voiced. Voicing was noted as current in some of the Southern counties of

England by Joseph Wright in his English Dialect Grammar and is reflected in

such standard English words of Southern provenience as vixen ‘she-fox’ (OE

fyxe) and vat (OE fæt).

9. Many words were borrowed from Old French (and less frequently from Latin)

beginning with [v] (for instance, veal, virtue, visit) and later with [z] (for

instance, zeal, zodiac). As a result, these sounds frequently appeared in initial

position, where they had not occurred in Old English.

10. Initial [θ] in words usually unstressed (for instance, the, this, they) was voiced

to [ð].

11. With the eventual loss of final -e [ǝ] (127), [v], [z], and [ð] came to occur also

in final position, as in give, lose, bathe.

As a result of the last four changes, the voiced fricatives, which in Old English

had been mere allophones of the voiceless ones, achieved phonemic status.

Middle English Vowels

The Old English long vowel sounds ē, ī, ō, and ū remained unchanged in Middle

English although their spelling possibilities altered: thus Old English fēt, Middle

English fēt, feet ‘feet’; OE rīdan, ME rīden, rӯden ‘to ride’; OE fōda, ME fōde,

foode ‘food’; OE hūs, ME hous ‘house.’

Except for Old English æ and y, the short vowels of those Old English stressed

syllables that remained short were unchanged in most Middle English speech—for

example, OE wascan ‘to wash,’ ME washen; OE helpan ‘to help,’ ME helpen; OE

sittan ‘to sit,’ ME sitten; OE hoppian ‘to hop,’ ME hoppen; and OE hungrig

‘hungry,’ ME hungry. The rest of the vowels underwent the following changes:

1. Old English ӯ [ü:] underwent unrounding to [i:] in the Northern and the East

Midland areas. It remained unchanged, though written u or ui, in the greater

part of the West Midland and all of the Southwest until the later years of the

fourteenth century, when it was unrounded there also. In the Southeast the Old

English sound became [e:]. Hence Old English hӯdan ‘to hide’ is reflected in

Middle English in such dialect variants as hīden, hūden, and hēden.

2. In the Northern and East Midland areas Old English y [ ¨ʊ] was unrounded to

[ɪ], exactly as ӯ [ü:] was unrounded to [i:] in the same areas. In the Southeast it

became e; but in the West Midland and the Southwest, it remained as a rounded

vowel [ ¨ʊ], written u, until late Middle English times, when it was unrounded.

3. Old English ā remained only in the North (hām ‘home,’ rāp ‘rope,’ stān ‘stone’),

becoming [e:] in Modern Scots, as in hame, rape, and stane. Everywhere south

of the Humber, ā became [ɔ:] and was spelled o or oo exactly like the [o:] that

remained from Old English, as in fo(o)de. To be sure how to pronounce a

Middle English word spelled with o(o), one needs to know its Old English form;

if the Old English was ā (ME stǫǫn, OE stān), the Middle English sound is [ɔ:];

if the Old English was ō (ME root(e), OE rōt), the Middle English sound is

unchanged [o:]. But there is an easier way for the beginning student of Middle

English literature, who may not be familiar with Old English, and it is fairly

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certain: if the modern sound is [o], typically spelled o with “silent e” (as in roe,

rode) or oa (as in road), then the Middle English sound is [ɔ:]. If, however, the

Modern English sound is [u], [ʊ], or [ǝ], spelled oo, the Middle English sound is

[o:], as in, respectively, Modern English food, foot, and flood, going back to

Middle English [fo:dǝ], [fo:t], and [flo:d].

There are, however, some special or exceptional cases. The Middle English

[o:] of twō (OE twā) and whō (OE hwā) developed from early Middle English

[ɔ:] by assimilation to the preceding [w], which was then lost (as observed above

in item 3 on consonant changes, 122). Thus Old English twā and hwā regularly

became early Middle English [twɔ:] and [hwɔ:], which assimilated to later

Middle English [to:] and [ho:], the sources of Modern English two [tu] and who

[hu] (spelling preserves the now archaic forms from early Middle English).

Another exception is Rome, which had [o:] in Middle English and [u] in

early Modern English, riming with doom and room in the poetry of Pope and

Dryden. That earlier pronunciation of Rome is indicated by Shakespeare’s pun

in Julius Caesar: “Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough.” The change

back to [rom] occurred in fairly recent times, probably influenced by the pro-

nunciation of the place-name in other languages. Brooch [broč] is an excep-

tional instance of oo as a spelling for [o] from Middle English [ɔ:]. A spelling

pronunciation [bruč] is occasionally heard.

4. Old English [æ:] became Middle English [ɛ:]. Both [e:] and [ɛ:] were written e or

ee in Middle English. In early Modern English times ea was adopted as a spell-

ing for most of those words that in the Middle English dialects spoken north of

the Thames had [ɛ:], whereas in the same dialects those words that had [e:]

usually continued the Middle English e(e) spelling. This difference in spelling is a

great blessing to beginning students of Chaucer. By it they can know that swete

breeth in the fifth line of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is to be

read [swe:tǝ brɛ:θ]. The Modern English spellings sweet and breath here, as

often, provide the clue to the Middle English pronunciation.

5. Old English short æ fell together with short a and came to be written like it in

Middle English: Old English glæd became Middle English glad. In Southwest

Midland and in Kentish, however, words that in Old English had short æ were

written with e (for instance, gled) in early Middle English times—a writing that

may have indicated little change from the Old English sound in those areas.

Changes in Diphthongs

Diphthongs changed radically between Old English and Middle English. The old

diphthongs disappeared and a number of new ones ([aɪ, eɪ, aʊ, ɔʊ, ɛʊ, ɪʊ, ɔɪ, ʊɪ])

developed:

1. The Old English long diphthongs ēa and ēo underwent smoothing or

monophthongization in late Old English times (eleventh century), becoming

[ɛ:] and [e:] respectively. Their subsequent Modern English development

coincided with that of [ɛ:] and [e:] from other origins. Thus Middle English lęęf

‘leaf’ [lɛ:f] develops out of Old English lēaf and seen ‘to see’ [se:n] out of Old

English sēon.

the middle english period (1100–1500)

125

The short diphthongs ea and eo became, respectively, a and e, as in Middle

English yaf ‘gave’ from Old English geaf, and herte ‘heart’ from Old English

heorte.

2. In early Middle English, two new diphthongs ending in the offglide [ɪ]—[aɪ]

and [eɪ]—developed from Old English sources, a development that had in

fact begun in late Old English times. One source of this development was

the vocalization of g to i after front vowels (OE sægde ‘said,’ ME saide; OE

weg ‘way,’ ME wey). Another source was the development of an i-glide

between a front vowel and Old English h, which represented a voiceless

fricative when it did not begin words (late OE ehta ‘eight,’ ME eighte).

In late Middle English, the two diphthongs [aɪ] and [eɪ] fell together and

became a single diphthong, as we know, for example, from the fact that

Chaucer rimes words like day (earlier [daɪ]) and wey (earlier [weɪ]). When the

off-glide followed i, it served merely to lengthen that vowel (OE lige

‘falsehood,’ ME līe).

3. Four new diphthongs ending in the off-glide [ʊ]—[aʊ], [ɔʊ], [ɛʊ], and [ɪʊ]—also

developed from Old English sources. The vocalization of g (the voiced velar

fricative) to u after back vowels contributed to the first two of these new

diphthongs (OE sagu ‘saw, saying,’ ME sawe; OE boga ‘bow,’ ME bowe).

Another source for the same two diphthongs was the development of a u-glide

between a back vowel and Old English h (OE āht ‘aught,’ ME aught; OE brohte

‘brought,’ ME broughte). A third source contributed to all four diphthongs:

w after a vowel became a u-glide but continued usually to be written (OE clawu

‘claw,’ ME clawe; OE growan ‘to grow,’ ME growen; OE lǣwede ‘unlearned,’

ME lewed; OE nīwe ‘new,’ ME newe). Diphthongization often involved a new

concept of syllable division—for example, Old English clawu [kla-wʊ] but

Middle English clawe [klaʊ-ǝ]. When the off-glide followed u, it merely

lengthened it (OE fugol ‘fowl,’ ME foul [fu:l]).

4. Two Middle English diphthongs are of French origin, entering our language in

loanwords borrowed from the French-speaking conquerors of England. The

diphthong [ɔɪ] is spelled oi or oy, as in joie ‘joy’ or cloystor ‘cloister.’ The

diphthong [ʊɪ] is also spelled oi or oy, as in boilen ‘to boil’ or poyson ‘poison.’

Words containing the second diphthong have [ǝɪ] in early Modern English—

pronunciations that have survived in nonstandard speech and are reflected in

the dialect spellings bile and pizen. (E. J. Dobson 2:810–26 treats this complex

subject at length.)

Just as Old English diphthongs were smoothed into Middle English mon-

ophthongs, so some new Middle English diphthongs have, in turn, undergone

smoothing in Modern English (for instance, ME drawen [draʊǝn], ModE draw

[drɔ]). The process of smoothing still goes on: some inland Southern American

speakers lack off-glides in [aɪ], so that “my wife” comes out as something very

like [ma waf], and the off-glide may also be lost in oil, boil, and the like. On the

other hand, new diphthongs have also developed: for instance, ME rīden [ri:dǝn],

ModE ride [raɪd]; ME hous [hu:s], ModE house [haʊs]. And others continue to

develop: [ʊ] and [ɪ] off-glides occur in words like boat and bait, and some

American dialects have glides in words like head [hɛǝd] and bad [bæɪd].

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Lengthening and Shortening of Vowels

In addition to the qualitative vowel changes mentioned above, there were some

important quantitative changes, that is, changes in the length of vowels:

1. In late Old English times, originally short vowels were lengthened before mb,

nd, ld, rd, and rð. This lengthening frequently failed to maintain itself, and by

the end of the Middle English period it is to be found only with i and o before

mb (clīmben ‘to climb,’ cǭmb ‘comb’); with i and u before nd (bīnden ‘to bind,’

bounden ‘bound’); and generally before ld (mīlde ‘mild,’ yēlden ‘to pay, yield,’

ǭld ‘old’). Reshortening has subsequently occurred, however, in some words—

for instance, wind (noun), held, send, friend; compare wind (verb), field, fiend,

in which the lengthening survives. If another consonant followed any of the

sequences mentioned, lengthening did not occur; this fact explains Modern

English child–children, from OE cild–cildru (nominative-accusative plural),

both with short vowels.

2. Considerably later than the lengthenings due to the consonant sequences just

discussed, short a, e, and o were lengthened when they were in open syllables,

that is, in syllables in which they were followed by a single consonant plus

another vowel, such as bāken ‘to bake’ (OE bacan). In Old English, short

vowels frequently occurred in such syllables—for example, nama ‘name,’ stelan

‘to steal,’ þrote ‘throat,’ which became in Middle English, respectively, nāme,

stˉęlen, thrǭte. This lengthening is reflected in the plural of staff (from ME staf,

going back to OE stæf): staves (from ME stāves, going back to OE stafas).

Short i (y) and u were likewise lengthened in open syllables, beginning in the

fourteenth century in the North, but these vowels underwent a qualitative

change also: i (y) became ē, and u became ō—for example, Old English wicu

‘week,’ yvel ‘evil,’ wudu ‘wood,’ which became, respectively, wēke, ēvel, wōde.

This lengthening in open syllables was a new principle in English. Its results are

still apparent, as in staff and staves, though the distinction between open and

closed syllables disappeared in such words with the loss of final unstressed e, as

a result of which the vowels of, say, staves, week, and throat now occur in

closed syllables: [stevz], [wik], [θrot].

3. Conversely, beginning in the Old English period, originally long vowels in

syllables followed by certain consonant sequences were shortened. The

consonant sequences that caused shortening included lengthened (doubled)

consonants but naturally excluded those sequences that lengthened a preceding

vowel, mentioned above under item 1. For example, there is shortening in

hidde ‘hid’ (OE hӯdde), kepte ‘kept’ (OE cēpte), fifty (OE fīftig), fiftēne (OE

fīftӯne), twenty (OE twēntig), and wisdom (OE wīsdōm). It made no difference

whether the consonant sequence was in the word originally (as in OE sōfte,

ME softe), was the result of adding an inflectional ending (as in hidde), or was

the result of compounding (as in OE wīsdōm). The effects of this shortening

can be seen in the following Modern English pairs, in which the first member

has an originally long vowel and the second has a vowel that was shortened:

hide–hid, keep–kept, five–fifty, and wise–wisdom. There was considerable

wavering in vowel length before the sequence -st, as indicated by such Modern

English forms as Christ–fist, ghost–lost, and least–breast.

the middle english period (1100–1500)

127

4. Vowels in unstressed syllables were shortened. Lack of stress on the second

syllable of wisdom accounts for its Middle English shortening from the Old

English dōm. Similarly, words that were usually without stress within the

sentence were subject to vowel shortening—for example, an (OE ān ‘one’), but

(OE būtan), and not (OE nāwiht).

5. Shortening also occurred regularly before two unstressed syllables, as reflected

in wild–wilderness, Christ–Christendom, and holy–holiday.

Leveling of Unstressed Vowels

As far as the grammar of English is concerned, the most significant of all phonolog-

ical developments in the language was the falling together of a, o, and u with e in

unstressed syllables, all ultimately becoming [ǝ], as in the following:

Old English

Middle English

lama ‘lame’

lāme

faran ‘to fare,’ faren (past part.)

fāren

stānes ‘stone’s,’ stānas ‘stones’

stǭnes

feallað ‘falleth’

falleth

nacod ‘naked’

nāked

macodon ‘made’ (pl.)

mākeden

sicor ‘sure’

sēker

lengðu ‘length’

lengthe

medu ‘liquor’

mˉęde

This leveling, or merging, was alluded to in the last chapter, for it began well

before the end of the Old English period. The Beowulf manuscript (ca. A.D. 1000),

for instance, has occurrences of -as for the genitive singular -es ending, -an for both

the preterit plural ending -on and the dative plural ending -um (the -m in -um had

become -n late in the Old English period), -on for the infinitive ending -an, and -o

for both the genitive plural ending -a and the neuter nominative plural ending -u,

among a number of such interchanges pointing to identical vowel quality in such

syllables. The spelling e for the merged vowel became normal in Middle English.

Loss of Schwa in Final Syllables

The leveled final e [ǝ] was gradually lost in the North in the course of the thirteenth

century and in the Midlands and the South somewhat later. Many words, however,

continued to be spelled with -e, even when it was no longer pronounced. Because a

word like rīd(e) (OE rīdan) was for a time pronounced either with or without its final

[ǝ], other words like brīd(e) (OE brӯd) acquired by analogy an optional inorganic -e

in both spelling and pronunciation. We know that this unhistorical [ǝ] was pro-

nounced because of the meter of verses, such as Chaucer’s “A bryde shal net eten in

the halle” (Canterbury Tales), in which the scansion of the line of iambic pentameter

requires “bryde” to have two syllables. There was also a scribal -e, which was not

pronounced but merely added to the spelling for various reasons, such as filling out

a short line, in the days before English orthography was standardized.

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In the inflectional ending -es, the unstressed e (written i, y, and u in some dia-

lects) was ultimately lost, except after the sibilants [s], [z], [š], [č], and [ǰ]. This loss

was a comparatively late development, beginning in the North in the early four-

teenth century and in the Midlands and the South somewhat later.

In the West Saxon and Kentish dialects of Old English, e was usually lost in the

ending -eð for the third person singular of the present indicative of verbs. It is hence

not surprising to find such loss in this ending in the Southern dialect of Middle

English and, after long syllables, in the Midland dialects as well, as in mākth

‘maketh’ bˉęrth ‘beareth,’ as also sometimes after short syllables, as in comth.

Chaucer uses both forms of this ending; sometimes the loss of [ǝ] is not indicated

by the spelling but is dictated by the meter.

The vowel sound was retained in -ed until the fifteenth century. It has not yet

disappeared in the forms aged, blessed, and learned when they are used as adjec-

tives. Compare learnëd woman, the blessëd Lord, and agëd man with “The

woman learned the truth,” “The Lord blessed the multitude,” and “The man aged

rapidly.” (In “aged whiskey” the form aged is used as a past participle—one could

not say “very aged whiskey”—in contrast to the adjectival use in agëd man.) And

the vowel of -ed is still retained after t or d, as in heated or heeded.

CHANGES IN GRAMMAR

Reduction of Inflections

As a result of the merging of unstressed vowels into a single sound, the number of

distinct inflectional endings in English was drastically reduced. Middle English became

a language with few inflectional distinctions, whereas Old English, as we have seen,

was relatively highly inflected, although less so than Proto-Germanic. This reduction

of inflections was responsible for a structural change of the greatest importance.

Old English weak adjectives (those used after the demonstratives) had the end-

ings -a (masculine nominative) and -e (neuter nominative-accusative and feminine

nominative); in Middle English, those endings fell together as -e. Thus an indication

of gender was lost. Middle English the ǭlde man (OE se ealda man) has the same

adjective ending as the ǭlde tale (OE feminine sēo ealde talu) and the ǭlde sword

(OE neuter þæt ealde sweord). The Old English weak adjective endings -an and

-um had already fallen together as -en; and with the Middle English loss of final -n,

they also came to have only -e. The Old English weak adjective genitive plural end-

ings -ena and -ra, after first becoming -ene and -re, were generally replaced by the

predominant weak adjective ending -e. Thus the five singular and plural forms of

the Old English weak adjective declension (-a, -e, -an, -ena or -ra, and -um) were

reduced to a single form ending in -e, with gender as well as number distinctions

completely obliterated. For the strong adjective, the endingless form of the Old

English nominative singular was used throughout the singular, with a generalized

plural form (identical with the weak adjective declension) in -e: thus (strong singular)

gręęt lord ‘great lord’ but (generalized plural) gręęte lordes ‘great lords.’

To describe the situation more simply, Middle English monosyllabic adjectives

ending in consonants had a single inflection, -e, used to modify singular nouns in

the weak function and all plural nouns. Other adjectives—for example, free and

the middle english period (1100–1500)

129

gentil—were uninflected. This simple grammatical situation can be inferred from

many of the manuscripts only with difficulty, however, because scribes frequently

wrote final e’s where they did not belong.

Changes resulting from the leveling of vowels in unstressed syllables were

considerably more far-reaching than just those in the declension of the adjective.

For instance, the older endings -an (infinitives and most of the oblique, or non-

nominative, forms of n-stem nouns), -on (indicative preterit plurals), and -en (sub-

junctive preterit plurals and past participles of strong verbs) all fell together as -en.

With the later loss of final inflectional -n in some of these forms, only -e [ǝ] was left,

and in time this was also to go. This loss accounts for endingless infinitives, preterit

plurals, and some past participles of strong verbs in Modern English, for instance:

Old English

Middle English

Modern English

findan (inf.)

fīnde(n)

find

fundon (pret. pl.)

founde(n)

found

funden (past part.)

founde(n)

found

It was similar with the Old English -as nominative-accusative plural of the most

important declension, which became a pattern for the plural of most nouns, and the

-es genitive singular of the same declension (OE hundas ‘hounds’ and hundes

‘hound’s’ merging as ME houndes). So too the noun endings -eð and -að (OE hæleð

‘fighting man,’ monað ‘month’) and the homophonous endings in verbs (OE findeð

‘he, she, it finds,’ findað ‘we, you, they find’)—all ended up as Middle English -eth.

Loss of Grammatical Gender

One of the important results of the leveling of unstressed vowels was the loss of

grammatical gender. We have seen how this occurred with the adjective. We have

also seen that grammatical gender, for psychological reasons rather than phonolog-

ical ones, had begun to break down in Old English times as far as the choice

of pronouns was concerned (92), as when the English translator of Bede’s Latin

Ecclesiastical History refers to Bertha, the wife of King Ethelbert of Kent, as hēo

‘she’ rather than hit, though she is in the same sentence designated as þæt (neuter

demonstrative used as definite article) wīf rather than sēo wīf.

In Old English, gender was readily distinguishable in most nouns: masculine

nominative-accusative plurals typically ended in -as, feminines in -a, and short-

stemmed neuters in -u. In Middle English, on the other hand, all but a handful of

nouns acquired the same plural ending, -es (from OE -as). These changes, coupled

with invariable the (replacing Old English masculine se, neuter þæt, and feminine

sēo), eliminated grammatical gender as a feature of English.

NOUNS, PRONOUNS, AND ADJECTIVES

The Inflection of Nouns

The leveling of unstressed vowels also affected noun inflection. The Old English

feminine nominative singular form in -u fell together with the nominative plural

form in -a, so singular denu ‘valley’ and plural dena ‘valleys’ both became Middle

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English dˉęne. Similarly, the neuter nominative-accusative plurals in -u and the geni-

tive plurals in -a came to have the same -e ending. Then the Middle English ending

-es (from the Old English nominative-accusative plural ending -as) came to be used

as a general plural ending for most nouns. So dˉęne acquired the plural dˉęnes. In the

same way, the genitive singular ending -es was extended to most nouns. Thus the

genitive singular and the general plural forms of most nouns fell together and have

remained that way ever since. For example, Old English genitive singular speres and

nominative plural speru both became Middle English spˉęres, Modern English

spear’s, spears; and Old English genitive singular tale and nominative plural tala

both became Middle English tāles, Modern English tale’s, tales.

A few s-less genitives—feminine nouns and the family-relationship nouns end-

ing in -r—remained throughout the period (as in Chaucer’s “In hope to stonden in

his lady grace” and “by my fader kyn”) and survived into early Modern English,

along with a few nouns from the Old English n-stem declension. Sometimes the

genitive -s was left off a noun that ended in s or that was followed by a word begin-

ning with s, just as in present-day “Keats’ poems, Dickens’ novels.” Solely a matter

of writing is the occasional modern “for pity sake,” which represents the same

pronunciation as “for pity’s sake.”

The few nouns that did not switch to the general plural ending -es nevertheless

followed the pattern of using the nominative-accusative plural as a general plural

form. They include oxen, deer, and feet. Middle English had a number of plurals in

-(e)n that have subsequently disappeared—for example, eyen ‘eyes’ and fǫǫn ‘foes.’

The -(e)n was even extended to a few nouns that belonged to the a-stem strong declen-

sion in Old English—for example, shoon ‘shoes’ (OE scōs). A few long-syllabled

words that had been neuters in Old English occurred with unchanged plural forms,

especially animal names like sheep, deer, and hors. The most enduring of alternative

plurals, however, are those with mutation: men, feet, geese, teeth, lice, and mice.

During the Middle English period, then, practically all nouns were reduced to

two forms, just as in Modern English—one with -s and one without it—the -s form

for the plural and genitive singular and the form without ending for other singular

uses. The English language thus acquired a device for indicating plurality without

consideration of case—namely, the -s ending, which had been in Old English only

one of three plural endings in the strong masculine declension. It also lost all trace

of any case distinctions except for the genitive, identical in form with the plural.

English had come to depend on particles—mainly prepositions and conjunctions—

and on word order to express grammatical relations that had previously been

expressed by inflection. No longer could one say, as the Anglo-Saxon homilist

Ælfric had, “Þās gelæhte se dēma” and expect the sentence to be properly understood

as ‘The judge seized those.’ To say this in Middle English, it is necessary that the

subject precede the verb, just as in Modern English: “The dēme ilaughte thǭs.”

Personal Pronouns

Only personal pronouns retained (as they still do) a considerable degree of their

complexity from Old English. They alone have preserved distinctive subject and

object case forms, the distinction between accusative and dative having already

disappeared in late Old English for the first and second person pronouns.

the middle english period (1100–1500)

131

The dual number of the personal pronouns also virtually disappeared in Middle

English. Such a phrase as git būtū ‘you two both,’ occurring in late Old English,

indicates that even then the form git had lost much of its idea of twoness and

needed the reinforcement of būtū ‘both.’ There was a great deal of variety in the

Middle English forms, of which those in the following table are some of the more

noteworthy.

Singular

Plural

First Person

Nom.

ich, I, ik

wē

Obj.

mē

us

Gen.

mī; mīn

our(e); oures

Second Person

Nom.

thou

yē

Obj.

thee

you

Gen.

thī; thīn

your(e); youres

Third Person (masculine)

Nom.

hē

hī, they, thai

Obj.

him, hine

hem, heom, them, thaim, theim

Gen.

his

her(e), their(e); heres, theirs

(feminine)

Nom.

shē, hō, hyō, hyē, hī,

schō, chō, hē

Obj.

hir(e), her(e), hī

Gen.

hir(e), her(e); hires

(neuter)

Nom.

hit, it

Obj.

hit, it

Gen.

his

The dialects of Middle English used different pronoun forms. For example, ik

was a Northern form corresponding to ich or I elsewhere. The nominative forms

they or thai (and other spelling variants such as thei and thay), derived from

Scandinavian, prevailed in the North and Midlands. The corresponding objective

and genitive forms them, thaim, theim, and their were used principally in the

North during most of the Middle English period. The native nominative form hī

remained current in the Southern dialect, and its corresponding objective and geni-

tive forms hem, heom, and here were used in both the South and Midlands. Thus in

Chaucer’s usage, the nominative is they but the objective is hem and the genitive

here. Ultimately the Scandinavian forms in th- were to prevail; in the generation

following Chaucer, they displaced all the native English forms in h- except for

unstressed hem, which we continue to use as ’em.

The Old English third person masculine accusative hine survived into Middle

English only in the South; elsewhere the originally dative him took over the objec-

tive function. The feminine accusative hī likewise survived for a while in the same

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region, but in the later thirteenth century it was supplanted by the originally dative

hir(e) or her(e), current elsewhere in objective use. The feminine pronoun had a

variety of nominative forms, one of them identical with the corresponding mascu-

line form—certainly an awkward state of affairs, forcing the lovesick author of the

lyric “Alysoun” to refer to his sweetheart as hē, the same form she would have used

in referring to him (for example, “Bote he me wolle to hire take” means ‘Unless she

will take me to her’). The predominant form in East Midland speech, and the one

that was to survive in standard Modern English, was shē.

The genitive forms of the personal pronouns came in Middle English to be

restricted in the ways they could be used. A construction like Old English nǣnig

hira ‘none of them’ could be rendered in Middle English only by of plus the objec-

tive pronoun, exactly as in Modern English. The variant forms of the genitive first

and second persons singular—mīn, mī; thīn, thī—preceding a noun were in exactly

the same type of distribution as the forms an and a; that is, the final n was lost

before a consonant. The forms with -n were used after nouns (as in the rare con-

struction “baby mine”) and nominally (as in Modern English “That book is

mine,” “Mine is that book,” and “that book of mine”). Similar forms in -n were

created by analogy for other pronouns: hisen, heren, ouren, youren, and theiren.

From the beginning, their status seems to have been much the same as that of

their Modern English descendants hisn, hern, yourn, and theirn. The personal pro-

nouns ending in -r developed analogical genitive forms in -es rather late in Middle

English: hires, oures, youres, and heres (Northern theires). These -es forms were

used precisely like Modern English hers, ours, yours, and theirs—nominally, as in

“The books on the table are hers (ours, yours, theirs)” and “Hers (ours, yours,

theirs) are on the table.”

Demonstrative Pronouns

Old English se, þæt, sēo, and plural þā, with their various oblique (non-nominative)

forms, were ultimately reduced to the, that, and plural thǭ. However, inflected

forms derived from the Old English declensions continued to be used in some dia-

lects until the thirteenth century, though not in East Midland. The, which at first

replaced only the masculine nominative se, came to be used as an invariable definite

article. That and thǭ were thus left as demonstrative pronouns. A different the,

from the Old English masculine and neuter instrumental þē, has had continuous

adverbial use in English, as in “The sooner the better” and “He did not feel the

worse for the experience.”

Thǭ ultimately gave way to thǭs (ModE those), from Old English þās, though

the form with -s did not begin to become common in the Midlands and the South

until the late fifteenth century. Chaucer, for instance, uses only thǭ where we would

use those. In the North thās, the form corresponding to thǭs elsewhere, began to

appear in writing more than a century earlier.

The other Old English demonstrative was þes, þis, þēos. By the thirteenth cen-

tury, the singular nominative-accusative neuter this was used for all singular func-

tions, and a new plural form, thise or thēse, with the ending -e as in the plural of

adjectives, appeared.

These developments have resulted in Modern English that–those and this–these.

the middle english period (1100–1500)

133

Interrogative and Relative Pronouns

The Old English masculine-feminine interrogative pronoun hwā became in Middle

English whō, and the neuter form hwæt became what. Middle English whō had an

objective form whōm from the Old English dative (hwām, hwǣm), which had

replaced the accusative (OE hwone), as happened also with other pronouns. Old

English hwæt had the same dative form as hwā, but, as with other neuters, it was

given up, so the Middle English nominative and objective forms were both what. In

Old English, the genitive of both hwā and hwæt had been hwæs; in Middle English

this took by analogy the vowel of whō and whōm: thus whōs.

In Middle English whō was customarily used only as an interrogative pronoun or

an indefinite relative meaning ‘whoever,’ as in “Who steals my purse steals trash,” a

usage that occurs first in the thirteenth century. The simple relative use of who, as in

the title of Rudyard Kipling’s story “The Man Who Would Be King,” was not fre-

quent until the sixteenth century, though there are occasional instances of it as early

as the late thirteenth. The oblique forms whōs and whōm, however, were used as

relatives with reference to either persons or things in late Middle English, at about

the same time that another interrogative pronoun, which (OE hwylc), also began to

be so used. Sometimes which was followed by that, as in Chaucer’s “Criseyde, which

that felt hire thus i-take,” that is, ‘Criseyde, who felt herself thus taken.’

The most frequently used relative pronoun in Middle English is indeclinable

that. It is, of course, still so used, though modern literary style limits it to restrictive

clauses: “The man that I saw was Jones” but “This man, who never did anyone any

real harm, was nevertheless punished severely.” A relative particle þe, continuing

the Old English indeclinable relative-of-all-work, occurs in early Middle English

side by side with that (or þat, as it would have been written early in the period).

Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

In the general leveling of unstressed vowels to e, the Old English comparative end-

ing -ra became -re, later -er, and the superlative suffixes -ost and -est fell together

as -est. If the root vowel of an adjective was long, it was shortened before these

endings—for example, swēte, swetter, swettest—though the analogy of the base

form, as in the example cited, frequently caused the original length to be restored

in the comparative and superlative forms; the doublets latter and later show, respec-

tively, shortness and length of vowel.

As in Old English, ēvel (and its Middle English synonym badde, of uncertain

origin), gōd, muchel (mikel), and lītel had comparative and superlative forms unre-

lated to them etymologically: werse, werst; bettre or better, best; mǭre, mǭst; lesse

or lasse, lˉęste. Some of the adjectives that had mutation in their Old English com-

parative and superlative forms retained the mutated vowel in Middle English—for

instance, long, lenger, lengest; ǭld, elder, eldest.

VERBS

Verbs continued the Germanic distinction of strong and weak, as they still do.

Although the vowels of endings were leveled, the gradation distinctions expressed

in the root vowels of the strong verbs were fully preserved. The tendency to use

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exclusively one or the other of the preterit vowel grades (singular or plural)

had begun, though there was little consistency: the vowel of the older plural

might be used in the singular, or vice versa. The older distinction (as in I sang,

we sungen) was more likely to be retained in the Midlands and the South than in

the North.

The seven classes of strong verbs survived with the following regular gradations

(although there were also many phonologically irregular ones). These gradation

classes should be compared with those of the Old English forms (104):

Preterit

Preterit

Past

Infinitive

Singular

Plural

Participle

Class I

wrīten ‘write’

wrǭt

writen

writen

Class II

clēven ‘cleave’

clˉęf

cluven

clǭven

Class III

helpen ‘help’

halp

hulpen

holpen

Class IV

bˉęran ‘bear’

bar

bēren

bǭren

Class V

sprˉękan ‘speak’

sprak

sprēken

sprˉęken

Class VI

shāken ‘shake’

shōk

shōken

shāken

Class VII

hǭten ‘be called’

hēt

hēten

hǭten

Although the seven strong verb patterns continued in Middle English, weak

verbs far outnumbered strong ones. Consequently, the weak -ed ending for the pret-

erit and past participle came to be used with many originally strong verbs. For a

time some verbs could be conjugated either way, but ultimately the strong forms

tended to disappear. A few verbs, however, continue both forms even today, such

as hang–hung–hanged and weave–wove–weaved.

Personal Endings

As unstressed vowels fell together, some of the distinctions in personal endings dis-

appeared, with a resulting simplification in verb conjugation. With fı¯nden ‘to find’

(strong) and thanken ‘to thank’ (weak) as models, the indicative forms were as

follows in the Midland dialects:

Present

ich

finde

thanke

thou

findest

thankest

hē/shē

findeth, findes

thanketh, thankes

wē/yē/they

finde(n), findes

thanke(n), thankes

Preterit

ich

fǭnd

thanked(e)

thou

founde

thankedest

hē/shē

fǭnd

thanked(e)

wē/yē/they

founde(n)

thanked(e(n))

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135

The verbs been ‘to be’ (OE bēon), doon ‘to do’ (OE dōn), willen ‘to want, will’

(OE willan), and gǫǫn ‘to go’ (OE gān) remained highly irregular in Middle

English. Typical Midland indicative forms of been and willen follow:

Present

ich

am

wil(le), wol(le)2

thou

art, beest

wilt, wolt

hē/shē

is, beeth

wil(le), wol(le)

wē/yē/they

bee(n), beeth, sinden,

wilen, wol(n)

ār(e)n1

1This Northern form is rare in ME.

2The forms with o, from the preterit, are late, but survive in won’t, that is, wol not.

Preterit

ich

was

wolde

thou

wast, wēre

woldest

hē/shē

was

wolde

wē/yē/they

wēre(n)

wolde(n)

Developments of the following Middle English forms of the preterit present

verbs are still in frequent use: o(u)ghte ‘owed, was under obligation to’; can

‘knows how to, is able,’ coude (preterit of the preceding, ModE could, whose l is

by analogy with would) ‘knew how to, was able’; shal ‘must,’ shulde (preterit of

the preceding); mōst(e) (ModE must) ‘was able to, must’; may ‘am able to, may,’

mighte (preterit of the preceding); dar (ModE dare), and durst (preterit of the

preceding).

Participles

The ending of the present participle varied from dialect to dialect, with -and(e) in

the North, -ende or -ing(e) in the Midlands, and -inde or -ing(e) in the South. The

-ing ending, which has prevailed in Modern English, is from the old verbal noun

ending -ung, as in Old English leornung ‘learning’ (that is, knowledge), bodung

‘preaching’ (that is, sermon), from leornian ‘to learn’ and bodian ‘to announce,

preach.’

Past participles might or might not have the prefix i- (y-), from Old English ge-.

It was lost in many parts of England, including the East Midland, but frequently

occurred in the speech of London as reflected in the writings of Chaucer.

WORD ORDER

Although all possible variations in the order of subject, verb, and complement occur

in extant Middle English literature, as they do in Old English literature, much of

that literature is verse, in which even today variations (inversions) of normal word

order may occur. The prose of the Middle English period has much the same word

order as Modern English prose. Sometimes a pronoun as object might precede the

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verb (“Yef þou me zayst, ‘How me hit ssel lyerny?’ ich hit wyle þe zigge an

haste . . . ,” that is, word for word, ‘If thou [to] me sayest, “How one it shall

learn?” I it will [to] thee say in haste . . . ’).

In subordinate clauses, nouns used as objects might also precede verbs (“And we,

þet . . . habbeþ Cristendom underfonge,” that is, ‘And we, that . . . have Christian sal-

vation received’). In the frequently occurring impersonal constructions of Middle

English, the object regularly preceded the verb: me mette ‘(it) to me dreamed,’ that

is, ‘I dreamed’; me thoughte ‘(it) to me seemed.’ If you please is a survival of this con-

struction (parallel to French s’il vous plaît and German wenn es Ihnen gefällt, that is,

‘if it please[s] you’), though the you is now taken as nominative. Other than these,

there are very few inversions that would be inconceivable in Modern English.

MIDDLE ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED

The first passage is in the Northern dialect, from The Form of Perfect Living, by

Richard Rolle of Hampole, a gentle mystic and an excellent prose writer, who

died in 1349. Strange as parts of it may look to modern eyes, it is possible to put

it word for word into Modern English:

1. Twa lyves þar

er þat christen

men lyfes: ane es called actyve lyfe,

Two lives there are that Christian men live: one is called active life,

for it es mare bodili warke; another, contemplatyve lyfe, for it es in mare

for it is more bodily work; another, contemplative life, for it is in more

swetnes

gastely.

Actife lyfe es mykel owteward and in mare travel,

sweetness spiritually. Active life is much outward

and in more travail,

and in mare peryle for þe temptacions þat er in þe worlde.

and in more peril

for the temptations that are in the world.

Contemplatyfe lyfe es mykel inwarde, and forþi

it es lastandar

Contemplative life is much inward, and therefore it is more lasting

and sykerar,

restfuller,

delitabiler,

luflyer, and mare

and more secure, more restful, more delightful, lovelier, and more

medeful,

for it hase joy in goddes lufe and savowre in þe lyf

full of reward, for it has joy in God’s love and savor

in the life

þat lastes ay

in þis present tyme if it be right

ledde. And þat

that lasts forever in this present time if it be rightly led.

And that

felyng of joy in þe lufe of Jhesu passes

al other merites in erth,

feeling of joy in the love of Jesus surpasses all other merits on Earth,

for it es swa harde to com to for þe freelte of oure flesch and þe many

for it is so

hard to come to for the frailty of our flesh and the many

temptacions þat we er umsett

with þat lettes us nyght and day. Al

temptations that we are set about with that hinder us night and day. All

the middle english period (1100–1500)

137

other thynges er lyght at com to in regarde þarof,

for þat may na man

other things

are easy to come to in regard thereof, for that may no man

deserve, bot anely it es gifen of goddes godenes til þam þat verrayli

deserve, but only it is given of God’s goodness to them that verily

gifes þam

to contemplacion and til quiete for cristes

luf.

give them(selves) to contemplation and to quiet for Christ’s love.

The following passages in late Middle English are from a translation of the

Bible made by John Wycliffe or one of his followers in the 1380s. The opening

verses of Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis are based on the edition by Conrad

Lindberg; the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) is based on the edition by

Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden. Punctuation has been modernized, and the

letters thorn and yogh have been replaced, respectively, by th and y, gh, or s.

These versions may be compared with the parallel passages in Chapters 5 and 8.

2.

Genesis 1.1–5. In the first made God of nought heuen and erth. 2. The erth

forsothe was veyn withinne and voyde, and derknesses weren vp on the face of the

see. And the spirite of God was yborn vp on the waters.

3. And God seid, “Be

made light,” and made is light. 4. And God sees light that it was good and dyui-

dide light from derknesses.

5. And clepide light day and derknesses night, and

maad is euen and moru, o day.

3.

Genesis 2.1–3. Therfor parfit ben heuen and erthe, and alle the anournyng of

hem.

2. And God fullfillide in the seuenth day his werk that he made, and he rys-

tid the seuenth day from all his werk that he hadde fulfyllide.

3. And he blisside

to the seuenthe day, and he halowde it, for in it he hadde seesid fro all his werk that

God schapide that he schulde make.

4. Luke 15.11–17, 20–24. A man hadde twei sones. 12. And the yonger of hem

seide to the fadir, “Fadir, yiue me the porcioun of catel that fallith to me.” And he

departide to hem the catel.

13. And not aftir many daies, whanne alle thingis

weren gederid togider, the yonger sone wente forth in pilgrymage in to a fer cuntre;

and there he wastide hise goodis in lyuynge lecherously. 14. And aftir that he

hadde endid alle thingis, a strong hungre was maad in that cuntre, and he bigan to

haue nede. 15. And he wente, and drough hym to oon of the citeseyns of that cuntre.

And he sente hym in to his toun, to fede swyn.

16. And he coueitide to fille his

wombe of the coddis that the hoggis eeten, and no man yaf hym. 17. And he turn-

ede ayen to hym silf, and seide, “Hou many hirid men in my fadir hous han plente of

looues; and Y perische here thorough hungir. . . .” 20. And he roos vp, and cam to

his fadir. And whanne he was yit afer, his fadir saigh hym, and was stirrid bi mercy.

And he ran, and fel on his necke, and kisside hym. 21. And the sone saide to hym,

“Fadir, Y haue synned in to heuene, and bifor thee; and now Y am not worthi to be

clepid thi sone.” 22. And the fadir seide to hise seruauntis, “Swithe brynge ye forth

the firste stoole, and clothe ye hym, and yiue ye a ryng in his hoond, and schoon on

hise feet. 23. And brynge ye a fat calf, and sle ye, and ete we, and make we feeste.

24. For this my sone was deed, and hath lyued ayen; he perischid, and is foundun.”

138

chapter 6

FOR FURTHER READING

General

Black. A History of the British Isles.

———. A New History of England.

Halsall. The Medieval Sourcebook.

Morgan. The Oxford History of Britain.

Overviews

Blake. The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. 2: 1066–1476.

Burrow and Turville-Petre. A Book of Middle English.

Irvine and Everhart. The Labyrinth: Middle English.

Mossé. A Handbook of Middle English.

Grammar

Brunner. An Outline of Middle English Grammar.

Fischer et al. Syntax of Early English.

Dictionaries

Davis et al. A Chaucer Glossary.

Kurath and Kuhn. Middle English Dictionary.

Lewis. Middle English Dictionary. Plan and Bibliography.

McSparran. Middle English Dictionary.

Stratmann. A Middle-English Dictionary.

Dialects

Kristensson. A Survey of Middle English Dialects, 1290–1350.

±±±±±±

The Early Modern

±±±±±±

7

± CHAPTER

±±±±

English Period

±

(1500–1800)

Society, Spellings, and Sounds

The early Modern period was transformative for both England and the language.

The sixteenth to eighteenth centuries were a time of revolutionary development,

opening the way for English to become a world language.

SOME KEY EVENTS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

The following events during the early Modern English period significantly

influenced the development of the English language.

• 1534 The Act of Supremacy established Henry VIII as “Supreme Head of the

Church of England,” and thus officially put civil authority above Church

authority in England.

• 1549 The Book of Common Prayer was adopted and became an influence on

English literary style.

• 1558 At the age of 25, Elizabeth I became queen of England and, as a woman

with a Renaissance education and a skill for leadership, began a forty-five-year

reign that promoted statecraft, literature, science, exploration, and commerce.

• 1577–80 Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe, the first Englishman

to do so, and participated in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, thus

removing an obstacle to English expansion overseas.

• 1590–1611 William Shakespeare wrote the bulk of his plays, from Henry VI

to The Tempest.

• 1600 The East India Company was chartered to promote trade with Asia,

leading eventually to the establishment of the British Raj in India.

• 1604 Robert Cawdrey published the first English dictionary, A Table

Alphabeticall.

139

140 chapter 7

• 1607 Jamestown, Virginia, was established as the first permanent English

settlement in America.

• 1611 The Authorized or King James Version of the Bible was produced by

a committee of scholars and became, with the Prayer Book and the works of

Shakespeare, a major influence on English literary style.

• 1619 The first African slaves in North America arrived in Virginia.

• 1642–48 The Puritan Revolution overthrew the monarchy and established a

military dictatorship, which lasted until the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660.

• 1660 The Royal Society was founded as the first English organization

devoted to the promotion of scientific knowledge and research.

• 1670 Hudson’s Bay Company was chartered for promoting trade and

settlement in Canada.

• 1688 The Glorious Revolution was a bloodless coup in which Parliament

invited William of Orange and his wife, Mary (daughter of the reigning

English king), to assume the English throne, resulting in the establishment of

Parliament’s power over that of the monarchy.

• 1702 The first daily newspaper was published in London, resulting in the

expanding power of the press to disseminate information and to form

public opinion.

• 1719 Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, sometimes identified as the

first modern novel in English.

• 1755 Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language.

• 1775–83 The American Revolution resulted in the foundation of the first

independent nation of English speakers outside the British Isles.

• 1788 The English first settled Australia near modern Sydney.

THE TRANSITION FROM MIDDLE TO MODERN ENGLISH

Despite vast changes in vocabulary and pronunciation, English speakers of the

sixteenth century were unaware that they were leaving the Middle English period

and entering the Modern. All such divisions between stages of the language’s

development are to some extent arbitrary, even though they are based on clear and

significant internal changes in the language and also correlate with external events

in the community of speakers.

Expansion of the English Vocabulary

The word stock of English was expanded greatly during the early Modern period in

three ways. As literacy increased, a conscious need was felt to improve and amplify

the vocabulary. As English speakers traveled abroad, they encountered new things

that they needed new words to talk about. And as they traveled, they increasingly

met speakers of other languages from whom they borrowed words.

During the Renaissance, an influx of Latin and Greek words (Chapter 12, 251–2) was

associated with a vogue for inkhorn terms, so named from the fact that they were

seldom spoken but mainly written (with a pen dipped into an ink container made of

horn). The influence of the Classical languages has remained strong ever since. French

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

141

also continued to be a major source of loanwords into English (256–7), as it has been

from the time of the Norman Conquest until today. In addition, Spanish and Portuguese

(258–9) became significant sources for new words, especially as a result of colonial expansion

in Latin America.

Many other languages contributed to the English vocabulary throughout the

period. Celtic (252–3) and Scandinavian (253–4) continued their influence, but

new impulses came from Italian (259) and German—both Low and High (260–2),

including Yiddish (262). More far-flung influences were from the languages of

Asia, Australasia, Africa, eastern Europe, Asia Minor, and the Americas (263–6).

Quite early in their history, the American colonies began to influence the

general vocabulary with loanwords from the languages of both Amerindians and

other European settlers in the New World. American colonists also changed the use

of native English words and exported those changes, sometimes under protest, back

to Britain. The first documented use of the word lengthy in the Oxford English

Dictionary is by John Adams in his diary for January 3, 1759: “I grow too minute

and lengthy.” Early British reactions to this perceived Americanism are typified by

a 1793 censorious judgment in the British Critic: “We shall, at all times, with

pleasure, receive from our transatlantic brethren real improvements of our common

mother-tongue: but we shall hardly be induced to admit such phrases as . . . ‘more

lengthy’, for longer, or more diffuse.”

Innovation of Pronunciation and Conservation

of Spelling

The fifteenth century, following the death of Chaucer, marked a turning point in

the internal history of English, especially its pronunciation and spelling, for during

this period the language underwent greater, more important phonological changes

than in any other century before or since. Despite these radical changes in

pronunciation, the old spelling was generally kept. William Caxton, who died in

1491, and the printers who followed him based their spellings, not on the

pronunciation current in their day, but instead on late medieval manuscripts.

Hence, although the quality of all the Middle English long vowels had changed,

their spelling continued as it had been at earlier times. For instance, the Middle

English [e:] of feet, see, three, etc. had been raised to [i:], but all such words went on

being written as if no change had taken place. Consequently, the phonological

value of many letters of the English alphabet changed drastically.

Printers and men of learning—misguided though they frequently were—greatly

influenced English spelling. Learned men preferred archaic spellings, and they created

some by respelling words etymologically. Printers also helped by normalizing older

scribal practices. Although early printed works exhibit a good many inconsistencies, still

they are quite orderly compared with the everyday manuscript writing of the time.

THE ORTHOGRAPHY OF EARLY MODERN ENGLISH

The spelling conventions of early Modern English were distinctive in a number of

ways.

142 chapter 7

In a few words, notably the and thee, early printed books sometimes used y to

represent the sounds usually spelled th. This substitution was made because the

letter þ was still much used in English manuscripts, but the early printers got their

type fonts from the Continent, where the letter þ was not normal. So they

substituted for þ the closest thing they found in the foreign fonts, namely y. Thus

the and thee were both sometimes printed as ye. The plural pronoun meaning ‘you

all,’ on the other hand, was written ye. When the e was above the line, the y was

always a makeshift for þ and never represented [y].

Writing letters superscript, especially the final letter of a word, was a device to

indicate abbreviation, much as we use a period. This convention lasted right

through the nineteenth century, for example, in Mr for Mr. or Genl for General.

The abbreviation yt stands for that. The form ye for the survives to our own day in

such pseudo-antique absurdities as “Ye Olde Choppe Suey Shoppe,” in which it is

usually pronounced as if it were the same word as the old pronoun ye. Needless to

say, there is no justification whatever for such a pronunciation.

The present use of i for a vowel and j for a consonant was not established until

the seventeenth century. In the King James Bible (1611) and the First Folio (1623)

of Shakespeare, i is used for both values; see, for instance, the passage from the

First Folio at the end of this chapter, in which Falstaff’s first name is spelled Iack.

Even after the distinction in writing was made, the feeling persisted for a long time

that i and j were one and the same letter. Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) puts

them together alphabetically, and this practice continued well into the nineteenth

century.

It was similar with the curved and angular forms of u—that is, u and v—they too

were originally used more or less indiscriminately for either vowel or consonant. For

example, an older text will have iaspre, liue, and vnder, for which a present-day

edition may substitute jaspre ‘jasper,’ live, and under, with j and v for i and u when

they indicate consonants, and u for initial v when it indicates a vowel. By the middle

of the seventeenth century, most English printers were making the same distinctions.

The matter was purely graphic; no question of pronunciation was involved in the

substitution. Yet as with i and j, catalogues and indexes put u and v together well into

the nineteenth century. So in dictionaries vizier was followed by ulcer, unzoned by

vocable, and iambic was set between jamb and jangle.

The sound indicated by h had been lost in late Latin, and hence the letter has no

phonetic significance in those Latin-derived languages that retain it in their spelling.

The influence of Classical Latin had caused French scribes to restore the h in the

spelling of many words—for instance, habit, herbage, and homme—though it was

never pronounced. It was also sometimes inserted in English words of French origin

where it was not etymological—for instance, habundance (mistakenly regarded as

coming from habere ‘to have’) and abhominable (supposed to be from Latin ab plus

homine, explained as ‘away from humanity, hence bestial’). When Shakespeare’s

pedant Holofernes by implication recommended this latter misspelling and consequent

mispronunciation with [h] in Love’s Labour’s Lost (“This is abhominable, which he

would call abbominable”), he was in very good company, at least as far as the writing

of the word is concerned, for the error had been current since Middle English times.

Writers of Medieval Latin and Old French had been similarly misled by a false notion

of the etymology of the word.

During the Renaissance, h was inserted after t in a number of foreign words—

for instance, throne, from Old French trone, which came into English with an

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

143

initial [t] sound. The French word is from Latin thronus, borrowed from Greek, th

being the normal Roman transliteration of Greek θ. The English respelling

ultimately gave rise to a spelling pronunciation with [θ], as also in theater and

thesis, which earlier had initial [t] as well. It was similar with the sound spelled th in

anthem, apothecary, Catherine (the pet forms Kate and Kit preserve the older sound),

and Anthony (compare Tony), which to a large extent has retained its historically

expected pronunciation in British English. The only American pronunciation of

Anthony is with [θ]. It is sometimes heard even in reference to Mark Antony, where the

spelling does not encourage it. The h of author, from Old French autor (modern

auteur), going back to Latin auctor, was first inserted by French scribes, to whom an h

after t indicated no difference in pronunciation. When in the sixteenth century this

fancy spelling began to be used in the English loanword, the way was paved for the

modern pronunciation, historically a mispronunciation.

Other Renaissance respellings also effected changes in traditional pronunciations.

An example is schedule, originally cedule from Old French. Its historically expected

pronunciation would begin with [s], but the sch- spelling, a sixteenth-century innova-

tion, changed that. Noah Webster recommended the American spelling pronunciation

with initial [sk], as if the word were a Greek loan. The present-day British pronunci-

ation of the first sound as [š] is also historically an error.

Debt and doubt are fancy etymological respellings of det and dout (both Middle

English from Old French), the b having been inserted because it was perceived that

these words were ultimately derivatives of Latin debitum and dubitare, respectively.

The c in indict and the b in subtle are similar. The learned men responsible for such

respellings were followed by pedants like Shakespeare’s Holofernes, who complains of

those “rackers of ortagriphie [orthography]” who say dout and det when they should

say doubt and debt. “D, e, b, t, not d, e, t,” he says, unaware that the word was indeed

written d, e, t before schoolmasters like himself began tinkering with spelling.

Rhyme and rhythm are twin etymological respellings. English had borrowed

rime from Old French about the year 1200, but in the sixteenth century scholars

began to spell the word also as rythme or rhythm and then a bit later as rhyme.

These respellings reflected the origin of the French word in Latin rithmus or

rythmus, ultimately from Greek rhythmos. The th in the rhythm spelling came to be

pronounced, and that form has survived as a separate word with the distinct

meaning of ‘cadence.’ For the meaning ‘repetition of sound,’ the older rime spelling,

which has continued alongside the fancy upstart rhyme, is better both historically

and orthographically, and so is used in this book. Both are in standard use.

Comptroller is a pseudolearned respelling of controller, taken by English from Old

French. The fancy spelling is doubtless due to an erroneous association with French

compte ‘count.’ The word has fairly recently acquired a new pronunciation based on

the misspelling. Receipt and indict, both taken from Anglo-French, and victual, from

Old French, have been similarly remodeled to give them a Latin look; their traditional

pronunciations have not as yet been affected, although a spelling pronunciation for the

last is possible by those who do not realize that it is the same word as that spelled in the

plural form vittles. Parliament, a respelling of the earlier parlement (a French loanword

derived from the verb parler ‘to speak’), has also fairly recently acquired a

pronunciation such as the later spelling seems to indicate.

Another such change of long standing has resulted from the insertion of l in

fault (ME faute, from Old French), a spelling suggested by Vulgar Latin fallita and

strengthened by the analogy of false, which has come to us direct from Latin falsus.

144 chapter 7

For a while the word continued to be pronounced without the l, riming with ought

and thought in seventeenth-century poetry. In Dr. Johnson’s day there was

wavering between the older l-less and the newer pronunciation with l, as Johnson

himself testifies in the Dictionary. The eighteenth-century orthoepists indicated the

same wavering. They were men who conceived of themselves as exercising a

directive function; they recommended and condemned, usually on quite irrelevant

grounds. Seldom were they content merely to record variant pronunciations.

Thomas Sheridan, the distinguished father of a more distinguished son named

Richard Brinsley, in his General Dictionary of the English Language (1780) decides

in favor of the l-less pronunciation of fault, as does James Elphinston in his

Propriety Ascertained (1787). Robert Nares in his Elements of Orthoëpy (1784)

records both pronunciations and makes no attempt to make a choice between them.

John Walker in his Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791) declared that to omit

the l made a “disgraceful exception,” for the word would thus “desert its relation

to the Latin falsitas.” The history of the l of vault is quite similar.

Although such tinkering with the orthography is one cause of the discrepancy

between spelling and pronunciation in Modern English, another and more important

one is the change in the pronunciation of the tense vowels that helps to demark

Middle from Modern English. This change, the most salient of all phonological

developments in the history of English, is called the Great Vowel Shift.

THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

A comparison of the modern developments in parentheses in the chapter on Old

English (87) shows clearly the modern representatives of the Old English long vowels.

As has been pointed out, the latter changed only slightly in Middle English: [a:], in Old

English written a, as in stān, was rounded except in the Northern dialect to [ɔ:], in

Middle English written o(o), as in stoon. But this was really the only noteworthy

change in quality. By the early Modern English period, however, all the long vowels

had shifted: Middle English ē, as in sweete ‘sweet,’ had already acquired the value [i]

that it currently has, and the others were well on their way to acquiring the values that

they have in current English. The changes in the long vowels are summarized in the

following table:

Long Vowels

Late Middle English

Early Modern English

Later English

[a:] name

[æ:]

[ɛ:]

[e]

name

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[e:] feet

[i]

feet

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[ɛ:] greet

[e]

great

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[i:] ride

[

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

ǝɪ]

[a

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

ɪ]

ride

[o:] boote

[u]

boot

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[ɔ:] boot

[o]

boat

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[u:] hous

[ǝʊ]

[a

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

ʊ]

house

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

145

In phonological terms:

1. The Middle English high vowels [i:] and [u:] were diphthongized, and then

the vowels were centralized and lowered in two steps, first to [ǝi] and [ǝu],

then to [aɪ] and [aʊ].

2. Each of the Middle English mid vowels was raised one step—higher mid [e:]

and [o:] to [i] and [u], respectively, and then lower mid [ɛ:] and [ɔ:] to [e]

and [o], respectively.

3. The low vowel [a:] was fronted to [æ:] and then raised in two steps through [ɛ:]

to [e].

In early Modern English, vowel quality generally became more important than

quantity, so length is shown with early Modern vowels only for [æ:] and [ɛ:], which

alone were distinguished from short vowels primarily by length. The beginning and

ending points of the shift can also be displayed diagrammatically as in the

accompanying chart.

The stages by which the shift occurred and the cause of it are unknown. There

are several theories, but as the evidence is ambiguous, they are best left to more

specialized study. By some series of intermediate changes, long ī, as in Middle

English rīden ‘to ride,’ became a diphthong [ǝi]. This pronunciation survives in

certain types of speech, particularly before voiceless consonants. It went on in most

types of English to become in the course of the seventeenth century [aɪ], though

there are variations in pronunciation.

It was similar with Middle English long ū, as in hous ‘house’: it became [ǝu].

This [ǝu], surviving in eastern Virginia and in some types of Canadian English,

became [aʊ] at about the same time as [ǝi] became [aɪ].

Middle English [o:], as in ro(o)te ‘root,’ became [u]. Laxing of this [u] to [ʊ] has

occurred in book, foot, good, look, took, and other words; in blood and flood there

has also been unrounding, resulting in [ǝ] in these two words. The chronology of this

subsequent laxing and unrounding is difficult to establish, as is the distribution of the

146 chapter 7

various developments. As Helge Kökeritz (Shakespeare’s Pronunciation 236) points

out, Shakespeare’s riming of words that had Middle English long close ō gives no clue

to his pronunciation, for he rimes food with good and flood, mood with blood,

reprove with love and dove. If these are not merely traditional rimes, we must conclude

that the distribution of [u], [ʊ], and [ǝ] was not in early Modern English the same as it

is in current English, and there is indeed ample evidence that colloquial English did

vacillate a good deal. This fact is not particularly surprising when we remember that

there is at the present time a certain amount of wavering between [u] and [ʊ] in such

words as roof, broom, room, root, and a few others.

The development of Middle English [ɔ:] is straightforwardly to [o] as in

Modern English home and stone. However, in a few words this [ɔ:] was laxed

perhaps before the Great Vowel Shift could affect it—for instance, in hot, from

Middle English hǫ(ǫ)t.

Middle English ā as in name and ai as in nail had by the early fifteenth century

been leveled as [a:] and thus were affected alike by the Great Vowel Shift. The

resultant homophony of tale and tail provided Shakespeare and his contemporaries

with what seems to have been an almost irresistible temptation to make off-color

puns (for instance, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona 2.3.52ff and Othello 3.1.6ff).

The current pronunciation of such words—that is, with [e]—became normal in

standard English probably by the early years of the eighteenth century. All these

pronunciations may have existed side by side, however, just as retarded and advanced

pronunciations coexist in current English.

The development of Middle English [e:] to Modern English [i] as in three and

kene ‘keen’ is quite regular.

The development of Middle English [ɛ:], as in hęęth ‘heath’ and other such words,

however, is complex. It has two results in early Modern English because of a change

that seems to have occurred in late Middle English before the Great Vowel Shift

operated. According to the Great Vowel Shift [ɛ:] becomes [e]; and that change is

illustrated by Falstaff’s raisin–reason pun of 1598, in the passage cited at the end of

this chapter, and many other such puns—for example, abased–a beast, grace–grease.

(The fullest treatment of Shakespeare’s puns—sometimes childish, but frequently richly

obscene—is in Part 2 of Kökeritz’s Shakespeare’s Pronunciation.)

But there is also convincing evidence that in late Middle English times, before

the Great Vowel Shift occurred, the vowel [e:] also came to exist as a dialect variant

in words like heath, beast, and grease. Its precise history is unknown, but it may

have developed as a pre–Great Vowel Shift raising in some variety of Middle

English. So in late Middle English times, the heath, beast, and grease words could

be pronounced in either of two ways—with [ɛ:] or with [e:]. Chaucer sometimes

rimes historically close e words with words that ordinarily had open e in his type of

English, indicating his familiarity with such a pre-1400 raising of [ɛ:] to [e:].

When the Great Vowel Shift occurred, it raised [ɛ:] to [e] and also [e:] to [i] in both

ways of pronouncing the heath, beast, and grease words. So in early Modern English

those words also had two pronunciations, with either [e] (mainly by fashionable people)

or with [i] by the less fashionable. And that social difference lasted until the eighteenth

century. But fashions change. And during the eighteenth century, the unfashionable

pronunciation of the heath, beast, and grease words with [i] became fashionable, except

in a few old-fashioned holdouts: break, great, steak, and yea. The present [i] vowel in such

words as heath, beast, and grease is thus obviously, as H. C. Wyld (211) puts it, “merely

the result of the abandonment of one type of pronunciation and the adoption of

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

147

another.” Other authorities agree with Wyld’s view—for instance, Kökeritz (Shake-

speare’s Pronunciation 194–209) and E. J. Dobson (2:606–16).

Before that change in fashion, many rimes from the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries testify to the [e] pronunciation in words that today have [i] instead—for

instance, Jonathan Swift’s “You’d swear that so divine a creature / Felt no

necessities of nature” (“Strephon and Chloe”), in which the riming words are to be

pronounced [kretǝr] and [netǝr], and “You spoke a word began with H. / And I

know whom you meant to teach” (“The Journal of a Modern Lady”), in which the

riming words are [eč] and [teč].

The formerly standard and fashionable pronunciation with [e] survives today

only in the handful of words mentioned above (break, great, steak, and yea) and in

some dialects, such as Irish. A few surnames borne by families long associated with

Ireland, like Yeats (compare Keats), Re(a)gan, and Shea, have also retained the

pronunciation with [e], as does Beatty in American speech.

As Dobson (2:611) points out, “Throughout the [early] ModE period there was a

struggle going on between two ways of pronouncing ‘ME ˉę words’”; ultimately the [i]

pronunciation was to win out, so that only a few words remain as evidence of the [e]

sound that prevailed in fashionable circles from about 1600 until the mid-eighteenth

century. This process was gradual, as the fashion spread from one word to another.

OTHER VOWELS

Stressed Short Vowels

The stressed short vowels have remained relatively stable throughout the history of

English. The most obvious changes affect Middle English short a, which shifted by

way of [a] to [æ], and Middle English short u, which was unrounded and shifted to

[ǝ], though its older value survives in a good many words in which the vowel was

preceded by a labial consonant, especially if it was followed by l—for instance,

bull, full, pull, bush, push, and put (but compare the variant putt).

It is evident that there was an unrounded variant of short o, reflected in

spellings of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Wyld (240–1) cites a

number of examples of a for o in spellings, including Queen Elizabeth I’s “I pray

you stap the mouthes.” This unrounding did not affect the language as a whole, but

such doublets as strop–strap and god–gad remain to testify to its having occurred.

Today [ɑ] is the typical American vowel of most words that had short [ɔ] in Middle

English (god, stop, clock, and so forth). Short e has not changed, except

occasionally before [ŋ], as in string and wing from Middle English streng and

wenge, and short i remains what it has been since Germanic times.

Short Vowels

Late Middle English

Early Modern English

Later English

[a] that

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y [æ] ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[ɛ] bed

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[ɪ] in

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[ɔ] on, odd

[

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y ɔ] or [ɑ]

[ʊ] but

[ǝ]

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

148 chapter 7

Diphthongs

The Middle English diphthongs had a tendency to monophthongize. For example,

[aʊ] in lawe and [ɔʊ] in snow were monophthongized to [ɔ] and [o], respectively.

The early fifteenth-century merger of [æɪ] in nail with [a:] as in name has already

been mentioned; the subsequent history of that diphthong was the same as that of

the long vowel with which it merged.

The Middle English diphthongs [ɛʊ] and [ɪʊ], written eu, ew, iu, iw, and u

(depending to some extent on when they were written), merged into [yu]. As we

saw in Chapter 2, this [yu] has tended to be reduced to [u] in such words as duty,

Tuesday, lute, and stews, in which it follows an alveolar sound. The [y] has been

retained at the beginning of a word (use as distinct from ooze) and after labials and

velars: b (beauty as distinct from booty), p (pew as distinct from pooh), m (mute as

distinct from moot), v (view as distinct from the first syllable of voodoo), f (feud as

distinct from food), g (the second syllable of argue as distinct from goo), k (often

spelled c as in cute as distinct from coot), and h (hew as distinct from who). After

[z], this [y] ultimately gave rise by mutual assimilation to a new single sound [ž] in

azure, pleasure, and the like. Similarly, the earlier medial or initial [sy] in pressure,

nation, sure, and the like has become [š], though this was not a new sound, having

occurred under other circumstances in Old English.

The Middle English diphthong [ʊɪ], occurring almost exclusively in words of

French origin, such as poison, join, and boil, was written oi rather than ui because of

the substitution of o for u next to stroke letters, in this case i (Chapter 6, 118). The first

element of this diphthong shifted to [ǝ] along with other short u’s. The diphthong thus

fell together with the development of Middle English ī as [ǝɪ], both subsequently

becoming [aɪ]. So the verb boil, from Old French boillir (ultimately Lat. bullīre) became

current nonstandard [baɪl]. Many rimes in our older poetry testify to this identity in

pronunciation of the reflexes of Middle English ī and ui—for instance, Alexander

Pope’s couplet “While expletives their feeble aid do join; / And ten low words oft creep

in one dull line.” The current standard pronunciation of words spelled with oi for

etymological ui is based on the spelling. Some dialects, however, preserve the

pronunciation with [aɪ] (Kurath and McDavid 167–8, maps 143–6).

The quite different Middle English diphthong spelled oi and pronounced [ɔɪ] is

also of French origin, going back to Latin au, as in joie (ultimately Lat. gaudia) and

cloistre (Lat. claustrum). It has not changed significantly since its introduction.

Diphthongs

Late Middle English

Early Modern English

Later English

[aʊ] lawe

[

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

ɔ] ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[ɔʊ] snow

[o]

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[æɪ] nail

[a:]

[æ:]

[

? ? ? y

? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? y ɛ:]

[e]

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[ɛʊ], [ɪʊ] fewe, knew

[yu]

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

[ʊɪ] join

[

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

ǝɪ]

[a

? ? ? ? y

ɪ]

[

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y ɔɪ]

[ɔɪ] joy

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? y

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

149

Quantitative Vowel Changes

Quantitative changes in the Modern English period include the lengthening of an

originally short vowel before voiceless fricatives—of [æ] as in staff, glass, and path to [æ:], which in the late eighteenth century was replaced by [ɑ] in standard British English; most

forms of American English, however, keep the unlengthened [æ]. Similarly, short o was

lengthened in soft, lost, and cloth; that lengthened vowel survives in American English as

[ɔ], compared with the [ɑ] of sot, lot, and clot, which comes directly from an earlier short

o without lengthening. Short [ɔ] also lengthened before [g], as in dog, compared with

dock. In dog versus dock the lengthening has resulted in a qualitatively distinct vowel in

most varieties of American English, [ɔ] versus [ɑ]. The earlier laxing of [u] to [ʊ] in words

such as hood and good has already been referred to in connection with the development

of Middle English [o:] in the Great Vowel Shift. In mother, brother, other, and smother,

originally long vowels were shortened (with eventual modification to [ǝ]). Father and (in

some types of speech) rather, with originally short vowels, have undergone lengthening,

for what reason we cannot be sure—quite contrary to the shortening that occurred in

lather and gather.

EARLY MODERN ENGLISH CONSONANTS

The consonants of English, like the short vowels, have been rather stable, though

certain losses have occurred within the Modern English period.

The Old English and Middle English voiceless palatal fricative [ç], occurring next

to front vowels and still represented in our spelling by gh, disappeared entirely, as in

bright, sigh, and weigh. The identically written voiceless velar fricative [x], occurring

next to back vowels, either disappeared, as in taught, bought, and bough, or became

[f], as in cough, laugh, and enough. These changes occurred as early as the fifteenth

century in England south of the Humber, though there is evidence that still in the later

part of the sixteenth century old-fashioned speakers and a few pedants retained the

sounds or at least thought that they ought to be retained (Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s

Pronunciation 306).

In the final sequence -mb, the b had disappeared in pronunciation before the

beginning of the Modern English period, so the letter b could be added after final m

where it did not etymologically belong, in limb. There was a similar tendency to

reduce final -nd, as in lawn, from Middle English laund; confusion seems to have

arisen, however, because a nonetymological -d has been added in sound and lend

(ME soun and lene), though in the latter word the excrescent d occurred long

before the Modern English period.

The l of the Middle English preconsonantal al was lost after first becoming a

vowel: thus Middle English al and au fell together as au, ultimately becoming [ɔ] (as

in talk, walk) or [æ] before f and v (as in half, salve) or [ɑ] before m (as in calm,

palm). The l retained in the spelling of these words has led to spelling

pronunciations, particularly when it occurs before m; many speakers now

pronounce the l in words like calm and palm. The l of ol was similarly lost before

certain consonants by vocalization, as in folk, yolk, Holmes, and the like.

A number of postvocalic l’s in English spelling were added because the ultimate

Latin sources of their words had an l, although it had disappeared in French, from

150 chapter 7

which the words were borrowed; ultimately those added l’s came to be pronounced

from the new spellings. The l in the spelling of falcon was thus restored from the

Latin etymon (ME faucon, from Old French, in which the vocalization to [ʊ] also

occurred). A football team known as the Falcons is everywhere called [fælkǝnz],

a pronunciation widely current for the bird long before the appearance of the team.

The spelling has as yet had little if any effect on the pronunciation of the name of

the writer William Faulkner. Perhaps if the name had been written Falconer, which

amounts to the same thing, the spelling pronunciation might in time have come to

prevail. As noted above, the l in fault and vault was also inserted. The older

pronunciation of the first of these words is indicated by Swift’s “O, let him not

debase your thoughts, / Or name him but to tell his faults” (“Directions for Making

a Birth-Day Song”).

In French loanwords like host and humble the h, because it is in the spelling,

has gradually come to be pronounced in all but a few words; it was generally

lacking in such words in early Modern English. In herb, the h remains silent for

many American speakers, but is pronounced by others, and by British speakers

generally. In other words, such as hour, the h is silent in all varieties of English.

There was an early loss of [r] before sibilants, not to be confused with the much

later loss (not really normal before the nineteenth century) before any consonant or

before a pause: older barse ‘a type of fish’ by such loss became bass, as arse became

ass, and bust, nuss, fust developed from burst, nurse, first; this was not, however, a

widespread change. An early loss of [r] before l is indicated by palsy (ME parlesie,

a variant of paralisie ‘paralysis’).

The final unstressed syllable -ure was pronounced [ǝr], with preceding t, d, and

s having the values [t], [d], and [s] or intervocalically [z], as in nature [-tǝr], verdure

[-dǝr], censure [-sǝr], and leisure [-zǝr], until the nineteenth century. Though Noah

Webster’s use of such pronunciations was considered rustic and old-fashioned by

his more elegant contemporaries, in his Elementary Spelling Book of 1843 he gave

gesture and jester as homophones. The older pronunciation is indicated by many

rimes: to cite Dean Swift once more, “If this to clouds and stars will venture, / That

creeps as far to reach the centre” (“Verses on Two Celebrated Modern Poets”).

Webster was also opposed to [-č-] in fortune, virtue, and the like, which he seems to

have associated with fast living. He preferred [-t-] in such words. But many of the

pronunciations that he prescribed were scorned by all of the proper Bostonians of

his day.

The initial consonant sequences gn and kn, still represented in our spelling of

gnarl, gnat, gnaw, knave, knead, knee, and a few other words, had lost their

first elements by the early seventeenth century. Loss of [k] is evidenced by the

Shakespearean puns knack–neck, knight–night, and others cited by Kökeritz

(Shakespeare’s Pronunciation 305).

Final -ing when unstressed, as in verb forms like walking or coming and in

pronouns like nothing and something, had long been practically universally

pronounced [-ɪn]. According to Wyld (289), “This habit obtains in practically all

Regional dialects of the South and South Midlands, and among large sections of

speakers of Received Standard English.” The velarization of the n to [ŋ] began as a

hypercorrect pronunciation in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and, still

according to Wyld, “has now a vogue among the educated at least as wide as the

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

151

more conservative one with -n.” Long before Wyld wrote these words, which

would need some revision for British English today, the [-ɪn] pronunciation had

come to be considered substandard in many parts of the United States, largely

because of the crusade that teachers had conducted against it, though it continues

to occur rather widely in unselfconscious speech on all social levels. Many spellings

and rimes in our older literature testify to the orthodoxy of what is popularly called

“dropping the g”—in phonological terms, using dental [n] instead of velar [ŋ], for

there is of course no [g] to be dropped. For instance, Swift wrote the couplets “See

then what mortals place their bliss in! / Next morn betimes the bride was missing”

(“Phyllis”) and the delicate “His jordan [chamber pot] stood in manner fitting /

Between his legs, to spew or spit in” (“Cassinus and Peter”). Inverse spellings such

as Shakespeare’s cushings (cushions), javelings (javelins), and napking (napkin) tell

the same story (cited by Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s Pronunciation 314).

EVIDENCE FOR EARLY MODERN PRONUNCIATION

Our knowledge of early Modern English pronunciation comes from many sources.

Fortunately not all gentlefolk knew how to spell in earlier days, which is to say that

they did not know conventional spellings. So they spelled phonetically, according

to their lights. What is by modern standards a “misspelling,” like coat for court or

crick for creek, may tell us a good deal about the writer’s pronunciation. A good

many such writings have come down to us.

Stress

Many words in early Modern English were stressed otherwise than they are in cur-

rent speech, as we can tell especially from poetry. Character, illustrate, concentrate,

and contemplate were all stressed on their second syllables, and most polysyllabic

words in -able and -ible had initial stress, frequently with secondary stress on their

penultimate syllables, as in Shakespeare’s “’Tis sweet and commendable in your

Nature Hamlet.” Antique, like complete and other words that now have final

stress, had initial stress; antique is a doublet of antic, with which it was identical in

pronunciation. But it is not always possible to come to a firm conclusion on the

basis of verse, as the many instances of variant stress in Shakespeare’s lines indicate

(Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s Pronunciation 392–8). It is likely that most of these

variant stress placements occurred in actual speech; it would be surprising if they

had not, considering the variations that occur in current English.

Scholarly Studies

Henry Wyld in his History of Modern Colloquial English has used many memoirs,

letters, diaries, and documents from this period as the basis for his conclusions con-

cerning the pronunciation of early Modern English. Kökeritz relies somewhat more

than Wyld on the grammars and spelling books that began to appear around the

middle of the sixteenth century, which he considers “our most important sources of

information” (17) for the pronunciation of English in Shakespeare’s day—works

152 chapter 7

such as John Hart’s An Orthographic (1569) and A Methode or Comfortable

Beginning for All Unlearned (1570), William Bullokar’s Booke at Large (1580) and

Bref Grammar for English (1586), Richard Mulcaster’s The First Part of the

Elementarie (1582), and, in the following century, Alexander Gill’s Logonomia

Anglica (1619; 2nd ed., 1621) and Charles Butler’s English Grammar (1633; 2nd ed.,

1634), which has a list of homophones in its “Index of Words Like and Unlike.” These

same works, with others, provide the basis for Dobson’s two-volume English

Pronunciation 1500–1700.

There are special studies of these early Modern writers on language by Otto

Jespersen (on Hart), Bror Danielsson (Hart and Gill), and R. E. Zachrisson

(Bullokar), along with general studies of early Modern English by Wilhelm Horn

and Martin Lehnert, Eilert Ekwall (A History of Modern English Sounds and

Morphology), and Karl Luick. The first volume of Jespersen’s Modern English

Grammar on Historical Principles deals with early Modern English phonology and

orthography.

The use of wordplay and rime has already been alluded to a number of times.

Kökeritz makes extensive and most effective use of these in Shakespeare’s Pronun-

ciation, a work that has been cited a number of times heretofore. There is no dearth

of evidence, though what we have is often difficult to interpret.

EARLY MODERN ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED

Spelling

The following paragraph is the chapter “Rosemary” from Banckes’s Herball (1525),

a hodgepodge of botanical and medical lore and a good deal of sheer superstition

thrown together and “impyrnted by me Richard Banckes, dwellynge in London, a

lytel fro ye Stockes in ye Pultry, ye .xxv. day of Marche. The yere of our lorde

.M.CCCCC. & xxv.” The only known original copies of this old black-letter “doctor

book” are one in the British Museum and one in the Huntington Library in Cal-

ifornia. What became of the many other copies of the work, which went through

at least fifteen editions, no one can say.

Noteworthy orthographic features of the book include the spelling ye for the or

thee, explained earlier in this chapter. Also, a line or tilde-like diacritic over a vowel

indicates omission of a following n or m, as in thẽ for them and thã for than. This

device is very ancient. The virgules, or slanting lines, are the equivalents of our

commas, used to indicate brief pauses in reading. As was the custom, v is used

initially (venymous, vnder) and u elsewhere (hurte, euyll ), regardless of whether

consonant or vowel was represented. Some of the final e’s are used for justifying

lines of type—that is, making even right-hand margins—a most useful expedient

when type had to be set by hand. Long s ( ), which must be carefully distinguished

from the similar “f,” is used initially and medially.

The statement in the first line about the herb’s being “hote and dry” is an

allusion to an ancient theory of matter that classified the nature of everything as a

combination of hot or cold and moist or dry qualities.

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

153

Ro emary.

This herbe is hote and dry/ take the flowres and put them in a lynen clothe/ & o boyle

them in fayre clene water to ye halfe & coole it & drynke it/ for it is moche worth

agayn t all euylles in the body. Al o take the flowres & make powder therof and

bynde it to the ryght arme in a lynen clothe/ and it hall make the lyght and mery. Al o

ete the flowres with hony fa tynge with owre breed and there hall ry e in the none

euyll wellynges. Al o take the flowres and put them in a che t amonge youre clothes

or amonge bokes and moughtes [moths] hall not hurte them. Al o boyle the flowres in

gotes mylke & than let them tande all a nyght vnder the ayer fayre couered/ after that

gyue hym to drynke thereof that hath the ty yke [phthisic] and it hall delyuer hym. Al o

boyle the leues in whyte wyne & wa he thy face therwith/ thy berde & thy browes and

there hall no cornes growe out/ but thou hall haue a fayre face. Al o put the leues

vnder thy beddes heed/ & thou halbe delyuered of all euyll dremes. Al o breke ye leues

mall to powder & laye them on a Canker & it hall flee it. Al o take the leues & put thẽ

into a ve el of wyne and it hall pre erue ye wyne fro tartne e & euyl sauour/ and yf

thou ell that wyne, thou hall haue good lucke & pede [success] in the ale. Al o yf

thou be feble with vnkyndly [unnatural] wette/ take and boyle the leues in clene water,

& whan ye water is colde do [put] therto as moche of whyte wyne/ & than make therin

oppes & ete thou well therof/ & thou hal recouer appetyte. Al o yf thou haue the flux

boyle ye leues in tronge Ay ell [vinegar] & than bynde them in a lynẽ [c]lothe and

bynde it to thy wombe [belly] & anone the flux hal withdrawe. Al o yf thy legges be

blowen with the goute/ boyle the leues in water/ & than take the leues & bynde them in

a lynen clothe aboute thy legges/ & it hall do ye moche good. Al o take the leues and

boyle them in tronge Ay ell & bynde them in a clothe to thy tomake/ & it hall delyuer

ye of all euylles. Al o yf thou haue the coughe/ drynke the water of the leues boyled in

whyte wyne/ & thou halbe hole. Al o take the rynde of Ro emary & make powder

therof and drynke it for the po e [head cold]/ & thou halbe delyuered therof. Al o take

the tymbre therof & brũne [burn] it to coles & make powder therof & thã put it into a lynen cloth and rubbe thy tethe therwith/ & yf there be ony wormes therin it hall lee

them & kepe thy tethe from all euyls. Al o make the a box of the wood and smell to it

and it shall pre erne1 thy youthe. Al o put therof in thy doores or in thy how e & thou

halbe without daunger of Adders and other ven-ymous erpentes. Al o make the a

barell therof & drynke thou of the drynke that tandeth therin & thou nedes to fere no

poy on that hall hurte ye/ and yf thou et it in thy garden kepe it hone tly [decently] for

it is moche profytable. Al o yf a mã haue lo t his mellynge of the ayre orelles he maye

not drawe his brethe/ make a fyre of the wood & bake his breed therwith & gyue it hym

to ete & he halbe hole.

Pronunciation

All quotations from Shakespeare’s plays in this chapter are from the First Folio (fac-

simile ed., London, 1910) with the line numbering of the Globe edition (1891) as

given in Bartlett’s Concordance. Roman type has been substituted for the italic used

for proper names occurring in speeches in the First Folio, except for one instance in

the passage cited below.

1 The printer has inadvertently turned the u that was in his copy, to make an n.

154 chapter 7

In the passage from Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV (2.4.255–66) that follows, the

phonetic transcription indicates a somewhat conservative pronunciation that was

probably current in the south of England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth

centuries. Vowel length is indicated only in the single word reason(s), in which it

was distinctive. Stress is indicated, but no attempt has been made to show fine

gradations. Prince Hal, Poins, and Falstaff, who has just told a whopping lie, are

speaking:

Prin.

Why, how could’ t thou know the e men in Kendall Greene, when it

[wǝɪ ˈhǝʊ ˈkudst

ðǝʊ ˈno

ðiz

ˈmɛn ɪn ˈkɛndǝl ˈgrin

ˈhwɛn ɪt

was o darke, thou could’ t not ee thy Hand? Come, tell vs your rea on:

wǝz ˈso ˈdærk ðǝʊ ˈkudst

nɔt ˈsi ðǝɪ ˈhænd ˈkʊm

ˈtɛl ǝs yǝr ˈrɛ:zǝn

what

ay’ t thou to this?

hwæt ˈsɛst ðǝʊ tǝ ˈðɪs

Poin.

Come, your rea on Iack, your rea on.

ˈkʊm

yǝr

ˈrɛ:zǝn ˈǰæk yǝr ˈrɛ:zǝn

Falst.

What, vpon compul ion? No: were I at the Strappado, or all the

ˈhwæt ǝˈpɔn kǝmˈpʊlsyǝn ˈno ˈwɛr ǝɪ æt ðǝ stræˈpædo ǝr ˈɔl ðǝ

Racks in the World, I would not tell you on compul ion. Giue you a

ˈræks ɪn ðǝ ˈwʊrld ǝɪ ˈwuld nɔt ˈtɛl yu ɔn kǝmˈpʊlsyǝn ˈgɪv yʊ ǝ

rea on on compul ion? If Rea ons were as plentie as Black-berries,

ˈrɛ:zǝn ɔn kǝmˈpʊlsyǝn ɪf ˈrɛ:zǝnz wɛr ǝz ˈplɛnti ǝz ˈblækˈbɛriz

I would giue no man a Rea on vpon compul ion, I.

ǝɪ wǝd ˈgɪv ˈno ˈmæn ǝ ˈrɛ:zǝn ǝˈpɔn kǝmˈpʊlsyǝn ˈǝɪ]

In this transcription it is assumed that Falstaff, a gentleman (even if a

somewhat decayed one) and an officer as well, would have been highly conservative

in pronunciation, thus preferring slightly old-fashioned [sy] in compulsion to the

newer [š] to be heard in the informal speech of his time (Kökeritz, Shakespeare’s

Pronunciation 317). It is also assumed that Falstaff used an unstressed form of

would [wǝd] in his last sentence, in contrast to the strongly stressed form [wuld] of

his second sentence, and that, even though the Prince may have had the sequence

[hw] in his speech, he would not have pronounced the [h] in his opening

interjectional Why, thus following the usual practice of those American speakers of

the last century who had [hw] when the word is interrogative, but [w] when it is an

interjection or an expletive (Kenyon 159).

It is a great pity that there was no tape recorder at the Globe playhouse.

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

155

FOR FURTHER READING

Historical Background

Black. A History of the British Isles.

———. A New History of England.

Morgan. The Oxford History of Britain.

Overviews

Barber. Early Modern English.

Görlach. Eighteenth-Century English.

———. Introduction to Early Modern English.

Lass. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 3: 1476–1776.

Wright. The Development of Standard English 1300–1800.

Wyld. A History of Modern Colloquial English.

The Great Vowel Shift

Wolfe. Linguistic Change and the Great Vowel Shift in English.

Zachrisson. Pronunciation of English Vowels, 1400–1700.

Shakespearean English

Kökeritz. Shakespeare’s Pronunciation.

Onions. A Shakespeare Glossary.

Partridge. Shakespeare’s Bawdy.

Zachrisson. English Pronunciation at Shakespeare’s Time.

Dictionaries, Usage, and Standard English

Fisher. The Emergence of Standard English.

Lancashire. Early Modern English Dictionaries Database.

Leonard. Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700–1800.

Reddick. The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773.

Sledd and Kolb. Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary.

Starnes and Noyes. The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson, 1604–1755.

±±±±±±±±±±

8

The Early Modern

C H A P T E R

±±±±±±± English Period

(1500–1800)

Forms, Syntax, and Usage

The early part of the Modern English period saw the establishment of the standard

written language we know today. Its standardization was due first to the need of the

central government for regular procedures by which to conduct its business, to keep

its records, and to communicate with the citizens of the land. Standard languages are

often the by-products of bureaucracy, developed to meet a specific administrative

need, as prosaic as such a source is, rather than spontaneous developments of the

populace or the artifice of writers and scholars. John H. Fisher has argued that

standard English was first the language of the Court of Chancery, founded in the fif-

teenth century to give prompt justice to English citizens and to consolidate the king’s

influence in the nation. It was then taken up by the early printers, who adapted it for

other purposes and spread it wherever their books were read, until finally it fell into

the hands of schoolteachers, dictionary makers, and grammarians.

The impulse to study language did not, in the first instance, arise out of a disin-

terested passion for knowledge, just as the development of a standard language did

not spring from artistic motives. Both were highly practical matters, and they were

interrelated. A standard language is spread widely over a large region, is respected

because people recognize its usefulness, and is codified in the sense of having been

described so that people know what it is. A standard language has to be studied

and described before it is fully standard, and the detailed study of a language has to

have an object that is worth the intense effort such study requires. So the existence of

a standard language and the study of that language go together.

Two principal genres of language description are the dictionary and the gram-

mar book. Dictionaries focus on the words of a language; grammar books, on how

words relate to one another in a sentence. The writing of dictionaries and of gram-

mar books for English began and achieved a high level of competence during the

early Modern English period. Several motives prompted their development.

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the early modern english period (1500–1800)

157

English had replaced French as the language of government in the late Middle

English period. It replaced Latin as the language of religion after the Reformation,

and particularly with the 1549 adoption of the Book of Common Prayer, which pre-

sented church services in a language “understanded of the people,” as the Articles of

Religion put it. English was being used again for secular purposes after nearly three

hundred years of not having been so used, and it was being used for sacred purposes

that were new to it. These revived and new uses provided a strong motive for “get-

ting it right.” In addition, English people were discovering their place on the interna-

tional scene, both political and cultural, and that discovery also prompted a desire to

make the language “copious,” that is, having a large enough vocabulary to deal with

all the new subjects English people needed to talk about.

In addition, social mobility was becoming easier and more widespread than

ever before. Social classes were never impermeable in England. Geoffrey Chaucer’s

ancestors must have been shoemakers, judging from his surname, which is from an

Old French word chausse, meaning ‘footwear, leggings,’ and his father was a wine

merchant, yet he became an intimate of royals and a diplomat on the Continent for

the English king—talent will out. However, the later part of the early Modern

period, particularly the eighteenth century, saw a significant shift of power and

importance from king to Parliament and from the landed gentry to the mercantile

middle class. The newly empowered middle class did not share the old gentry’s con-

fidence of manners and language. Instead, they wanted to know what was “right.”

They looked for guidance in language and in other matters. Lexicographers and

grammarians were only too happy to oblige them.

THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE

Early Dictionaries

The first English dictionaries appeared in the early Modern English period. If one

had to set up a line of development for them, one would start with the Old and

Middle English interlinear glosses in Latin and French texts, then proceed through

the bilingual vocabularies produced by schoolmasters and designed for those

studying foreign languages, specifically Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. But

the first work designed expressly for listing and defining English words for

English-speaking

people

was

the

schoolmaster

Robert

Cawdrey’s Table

Alphabeticall (1604) (“conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understand-

ing of hard usuall English wordes, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or

French. &c.”).

Other dictionaries followed in the same tradition of explaining “hard words”

but gradually moved toward a full list of the English vocabulary, among them, that

of John Bullokar, Doctor of Physick, An English Expositour (1616); Henry

Cockeram’s English Dictionarie (1623); Thomas Blount’s Glossographia (1656);

Edward Phillips’s New World of English Words (1658); Edward Cocker’s English

Dictionary (1704); and Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary

(1721), with a second volume that was really a supplement appearing in 1727. In

1730, Bailey (and others) produced the Dictionarium Britannicum, with about

48,000 entries. In 1755 Samuel Johnson published his great two-volume Dictionary

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of the English Language, which was based on the Dictionarium Britannicum, though

containing fewer entries than it.

The publication of Johnson’s Dictionary was certainly the most important lin-

guistic event of the eighteenth century, not to say the entire period under discussion,

for to a large extent it “fixed” English spelling and established a standard for the use

of words. Johnson did indeed attempt to exercise a directive function. It would have

been strange had he not done so at that time. For most people it is apparently not

sufficient, even today, for the lexicographer simply to record and define the words

of the language and to indicate how they are pronounced by those who use them;

he is also supposed to have some God-given power of determining which words are

“good” words and which are “bad” ones and to know how they “ought” to be pro-

nounced. But Johnson had the good sense usually to recognize the prior claims of

usage over the arbitrary appeals to logic, analogy, Latin grammar, and sheer preju-

dice so often made by his contemporaries, even if he did at times settle matters by

appeals to his own taste—which was fortunately good taste.

The son of a bookseller in Lichfield, Johnson was a Tory in both name and con-

viction. Hence, along with his typical eighteenth-century desire to “fix” the language

went a great deal of respect for upper-class usage. He can thus be said truly to have

consolidated a standard of usage that was not altogether of his own making. His use

of illustrative quotations, literally by the thousands, was an innovation; but his own

definitions show the most discriminating judgment. The quirky definitions, like that

for oats—“a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland sup-

ports the people”—are well-known, so well-known that some people must have the

false impression that there are very many others not so well-known. It is in a way

unfortunate that these dictionary jokes have been played up for their amusement

value, for they are actually few in number.

Eighteenth-Century Attitudes toward

Grammar and Usage

The purist attitude predominant in eighteenth-century England was the manifesta-

tion of an attitude toward language that has been current in all times and in all

places, as it is in our own day. Doubtless there are and have been purists—persons

who believe in an absolute and unwavering standard of “correctness”—in even the

most undeveloped societies, for purism is a matter of temperament rather than of

culture.

Although very dear to American purists, the “rules” supposed to govern English

usage originated not in America, but in the mother country. The Englishmen who

formulated them were as ill-informed and as inconsistent as their slightly later

American counterparts. Present-day notions of “correctness” are to a large extent

based on the notion, prominent in the eighteenth century, that language is of divine

origin and hence was perfect in its beginnings but is constantly in danger of corrup-

tion and decay unless it is diligently kept in line by wise people who are able to get

themselves accepted as authorities, such as those who write dictionaries and

grammars.

Latin was regarded as having retained much of its original “perfection.” No one

seems to have been very much aware that the language of Rome was the culmination

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

159

of a long development with many changes of the sort deplored in English. When

English grammars came to be written, they were based on Latin grammar, even

down to the terminology. The most influential of the eighteenth-century advocates

of prescriptive grammar, who aimed at bringing English into a Latin-like state of per-

fection, was Robert Lowth (1710–87). He was a theologian, Hebraist, professor of

poetry at Oxford from 1741 to 1753, later bishop of Oxford, then of London, and

dean of the Chapel Royal, who four years before his death was offered the archbish-

opric of Canterbury, but refused it.

In the preface to his Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), Lowth

agreed with Dean Swift’s charge, made in 1712 in his Proposal for Correcting,

Improving, and Ascertaining [that is, fixing or making certain] the English

Tongue, that “our language is extremely imperfect,” “that it offends against every

part of grammar,” and that most of the “best authors of our age” commit “many

gross improprieties, which . . . ought to be discarded.” Lowth was able to find many

egregious blunders in the works of our most eminent writers; his footnotes are filled

with them. It apparently never occurred to any of his contemporaries to doubt

that so famous and successful a man had inside information about an ideal state

of the English language. Perhaps they thought he got it straight from a linguistic

Yahweh.

In any case, Lowth set out in all earnestness in the midst of a busy life to do

something constructive about the deplorable English written by the masters of

English literature. Like most men of his time, he believed in universal grammar.

Consequently he believed that English was “easily reducible to a System of rules.”

Among many other achievements, he promulgated the rules for shall and will that

had been formulated by John Wallis in his Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae. Those

rules, which continue to be cited by prescriptivists, were never accurate and are

irrelevant for most speakers today.

One of the most influential of the late eighteenth-century grammarians was

Lindley Murray, a Philadelphia-born Quaker who returned to England after the

American Revolution and wrote an English Grammar for use in Quaker girls’

schools. He was motivated by a wish to foster the study of the native language, as

opposed to Latin, and by his religious piety, which “predisposed him to regard lin-

guistic matters in terms of right and wrong. His highly moralistic outlook perforce

carried over into his attitude toward usage” (Read, “Motivation of Lindley

Murray’s Grammatical Work” 531).

Although the grammarians who proclaimed rules for language were children of

their age, influenced in linguistic matters by their attitudes toward other aspects of

life, they must not therefore be thought contemptible. Bishop Lowth was not—and,

heaven knows, Dean Swift, one of the glories of English literature, was certainly not.

Nor was Joseph Priestley, who, in addition to writing the original and in many

respects forward-looking Rudiments of English Grammar (1761), was the discoverer

of oxygen, a prominent nonconformist preacher, and a voluminous writer on theo-

logical, scientific, political, and philosophical subjects. Like George Campbell, who

in his Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776) went so far as to call language “purely a species

of fashion,” Priestley recognized the superior force of usage. He also shared

Campbell’s belief that there was need to control language in some way other than

by custom. Being children of the Age of Reason, both had recourse to the principle

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of analogy to settle questions of divided usage, though admitting that it was not

always possible to do so.

All these men were indeed typical of their time, in most respects a good time; and

they were honest men according to their lights, which in other respects were quite

bright indeed. We cannot blame them for not having information that was unavail-

able in their day or for holding attitudes that were universal in their time. Present-day

purists cannot claim such justification. Despite the tremendous advances of linguistics

since the eighteenth century, popular attitudes toward language have changed very

little since Bishop Lowth and Lindley Murray were laying down the law. Their pre-

cepts were largely based on what they supposed to be logic and reason, for they

believed that the laws of language were rooted in the natural order, and this was of

course “reasonable.”

To cite an example, eighteenth-century grammarians outlawed the emphatic

double negative construction for the reason stated by Lowth, that “two Negatives

in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an Affirmative,” just as they do

in mathematics, though the analogy is quite false. Many very reasonable people of

earlier times produced sentences with two or even more negatives, as many today

still do. Chaucer has four in “Forwhy to tellen nas [ne was] nat his entente / To

nevere no man” (Troilus and Criseyde) and four in his description of the Knight

in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: “He nevere yet no vileynye ne

sayde / In al his lyf unto no maner wight.” It certainly never occurred to him that

these would cancel out and thus reverse his meaning. The double negative is not

part of formal standard English today because people who use formal standard

English don’t use it—not because it is unreasonable.

Modern linguistics has made very little headway in convincing those who have

not studied the subject that language is a living, hence changing, thing, rather than

an ideal toward which we should all hopelessly aspire. Some schoolroom grammars

and handbooks of English usage continue to perpetuate the tradition of Bishop

Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar. Indeed, the very word grammar

means to many highly literate people not the study of language, but merely so sim-

ple a thing as making the “proper” choice between shall and will, between and

among, different from and different than, and who and whom, as well as the avoid-

ance of terminal prepositions, ain’t, and It’s me. In Chapter 9 we examine in more

detail the later developments of this comparatively recent tradition, which would

be—as Shakespeare says of drunken carousing in Denmark—more honored in the

breach than the observance.

NOUNS

The actual grammar of early Modern English differed in only relatively minor

respects from that of either late Middle English or our own time. There was nothing

striking to distinguish the grammar of Shakespeare, Milton, and the eighteenth-

century novelists from that of fourteenth-century Chaucer or twentieth-century

Doris Lessing. Yet many grammatical changes occurred during the three hundred

years between 1500 and 1800, some of them in nouns.

As we have seen, by the end of the Middle English period -es had been

extended to practically all nouns as a genitive singular and caseless plural suffix.

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

161

As a result, most nouns had only two forms (sister, sisters), as they do today in

speech. The use of the apostrophe to distinguish the written forms of the genitive

singular (sister’s) and plural (sisters’) was not widely adopted until the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries, respectively.

Irregular Plurals

The handful of mutated-vowel plurals for the most part resisted the analogical princi-

ple, so that feet, geese, teeth, lice, mice, men, and women have survived to the present

and show no tendency to give way to -s plurals. A few -n plurals remained in early

Modern English, including eyen ‘eyes,’ shoon ‘shoes,’ kine ‘cows,’ brethren, children,

and oxen. The first two are now obsolete; kine continues to eke out a precarious exis-

tence as an archaic poetic word; and brethren has a very limited currency, confined in

serious use mainly to certain religious and fraternal groups. In kine, brethren, and

children, the n had not been present in Old English but was added by analogy with

other -n plurals. The regularly developed ky and childer, which go back, respectively,

to Old English cӯ and cildru, were current until fairly recently in the dialects of north

England and of Scotland. Brethren (Old English brōðor or brōðru) also added an n

by analogy and introduced a mutated vowel that did not occur in the Old English

plural. Oxen is thus the only “pure” survival of the Old English weak declension,

which formed nominative-accusative plurals with the suffix -an.

Uninflected plurals still survive from Old and Middle English times in deer, sheep,

swine, folk, and kind. Analogical folks occurred very early in the Modern English

period. Kind has acquired a new -s plural because of the feeling that the older con-

struction was a “grammatical error,” despite the precedent of its use in “these (those,

all) kind of” by Shakespeare, Dryden, Swift, Goldsmith, Austen, and others. Its syno-

nym sort, which is not of Old English origin, acquired an uninflected plural as early as

the sixteenth century by analogy with kind, as in “these (those, all) sort of,” but this

construction is also frowned upon by prescriptivists, despite its use by Swift, Fielding,

Austen, Dickens, Trollope, Wells, and others (Jespersen, Modern English Grammar

2:68). Horse retained its historical uninflected plural, as in Chaucer’s “His hors were

Goode” (Canterbury Tales, General Prologue) and Shakespeare’s “Come on, then,

horse and chariots let us have” (Titus Andronicus), until the seventeenth century,

though the analogical plural horses had begun to occur as early as the thirteenth.

Doubtless by analogy with deer, sheep, and the like, the names of other creatures

that had -s plurals in earlier times came to have uninflected plurals—for example,

fish and fowl, particularly when these are regarded as game. Barnyard creatures take

the -s (fowls, ducks, pigs, and so forth); and Jesus Christ distributed to the multitude

“a few little fishes” (Matthew 15.34). But one shoots (wild) fowl and duck and

catches fish. The uninflected plural may be extended to the names of quite un-

English beasts, like antelope and buffalo (“a herd of buffalo”).

HIS-Genitive

A remarkable construction is the use of his, her, and their as signs of the genitive

(his-genitive), as in “Augustus his daughter” (E. K.’s gloss to Spenser’s Shepherds’

Calendar, 1579), “Elizabeth Holland her howse” (State Papers, 1546), and “the

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House of Lords their proceedings” (Pepys’s Diary, 1667). This use began in Old

English times but had its widest currency in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

as in Shakespeare’s “And art not thou Poines, his Brother?” (2 Henry IV) and in

the “Prayer for All Conditions of Men” in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

“And this we beg for Jesus Christ his sake.”

The use of possessive pronouns as genitive markers seems to have had a double

origin. On the one hand, it may have arisen from the sort of topic-comment con-

struction that we still have in present-day English: “My brother—his main interest

is football.” Such a construction would have provided a way in Old English to indi-

cate possession for foreign proper names and for other expressions in which the

inflected genitive was awkward. The oldest examples we have are from King

Alfred’s ninth-century translation of the history of the world by Orosius: “Nilus

seo ea hire æwielme is neh þæm clife,” that is, ‘Nile, the river—her source is near

the cliff,’ and “Affrica and Asia hiera landgemircu onginnað of Alexandria,” that is,

‘Africa and Asia—their boundaries start from Alexandria.’ An early example with

his is from Ælfric’s translation of the Book of Numbers (made about the year

1000): “We gesawon Enac his cynryn,” that is, ‘We saw Anak’s kindred.’

On the other hand, many English speakers came to regard the historical geni-

tive ending -s as a variant of his. In its unstressed pronunciation, his was and is still

pronounced without an [h], so that “Tom bets his salary” and “Tom Betts’s salary”

are identical in pronunciation. Once speakers began to think of “Mars’s armor” as

a variant of “Mars his armor,” an association doubtless reinforced by the use of

the latter construction from early times as mentioned above, they started to spell

the genitive ending -s as his (Wyld 314–5; Jespersen, Modern English Grammar 6:

301–2).

That genitive -s was confused with his is shown by the occasional use of his

with females, as in “Mrs. Sands his maid” (OED, 1607), and by the mixture of

the two spellings, as in “Job’s patience, Moses his meekness, Abraham’s faith”

(OED, 1568). In the latter example, his was used when the genitive ending was

pronounced as an extra syllable, and ’s when it was not, the apostrophe also sug-

gesting that the genitive -s was regarded as a contraction of his. Other spellings for

both his and the genitive ending were is and ys, as in “Harlesdon ys name” and

“her Grace is requeste,” that is, ‘her Grace’s request’ (Wyld 315).

His (with its variants is and ys) was much more common in this construction than

her or their. The his-genitive, whichever pronoun is used, was most prevalent with

proper names and especially after sibilants, as in Mars, Moses, Sands, and Grace, an

environment in which the genitive ending is homophonous with the unstressed pro-

nunciation of his. Although the his-genitive in Old English must have been the sort of

topic-comment construction cited above, its early Modern English frequency was cer-

tainly due, at least in part, to a confusion of inflectional -s and his. The construction

has survived, archaically, in printed bookplates: “John Smith His Book.”

Group Genitive

The group-genitive construction, as in “King Priam of Troy’s son” and “The Wife

of Bath’s Tale,” is a development of the early Modern English period. “Group” in

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

163

the term for this construction refers to the fact that the genitive ’s is added, not to

the noun to which it relates most closely, but rather to whatever word ends a

phrase including such a noun. Though there were sporadic occurrences of this con-

struction in Middle English, the usual older idiom is illustrated by Chaucer’s “the

kyng Priamus sone of Troye” and “The Wyves Tale of Bathe,” or its variant “The

Wyf of Bathe Hire Tale” with a his-genitive (in this case, hire for ‘her’). What has

happened is that a phrase has been taken as a unit, and the sign of the genitive

is affixed to the last word of the phrase. The construction also occurs with a pro-

noun plus else, as in “everybody else’s,” and with nouns connected by a coordinat-

ing conjunction, as in “Kenyon and Knott’s Pronouncing Dictionary” and “an hour

or two’s time.” There are comparatively few literary examples of clauses so treated,

but in everyday speech such constructions as “the little boy that lives down the

street’s dog” and “the woman I live next door to’s husband” are frequent. “He is

the woman who is the best friend this club has ever had’s husband” is an extreme

example from Gracie Allen, an early radio and television comedian noted for her

confusing speech.

An inflection is added to a word and goes with that word semantically and

grammatically. As a consequence of the group genitive, the morpheme we spell ’s

has ceased to be an inflection and has instead become a grammatical particle

always pronounced as part of the preceding word (an enclitic), although syntacti-

cally it goes with a whole preceding phrase, not with that word alone. Of all the

Old English inflectional endings, -es (the origin of our ’s) has had the most unusual

historical development: it has broken off from the nouns to which it was originally

added and moved up to the level of phrases, where it functions syntactically like

a word on that higher level, although it continues to be pronounced as a mere

word ending.

Uninflected Genitive

In early Modern English an uninflected genitive occurred in a number of special

circumstances, especially for some nouns that were feminine in Old English and

occasionally for nouns ending in [s] or preceding words beginning with [s]—for

example, for conscience sake and for God sake. A few uninflected genitives, though

not generally recognized as such, survive to the present day in reference to the

Virgin Mary—for example, Lady Day (that is, Our Lady’s Day ‘Feast of the

Annunciation’), Lady Chapel (Our Lady’s Chapel), and ladybird (Our Lady’s

bird). Sometimes an uninflected genitive was used as an alternative to the group

genitive, as in “the duke of Somerset dowther [daughter].” The uninflected genitive

of present-day African-American English (for example, “my brother car”), although

of different historical origin, has re-created a structure that was once a part of

general English usage.

ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS

The distinction between strong and weak adjective forms, already greatly simplified

by the Middle English loss of the final n, completely disappeared with the further

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loss of [ǝ] from the end of words. The loss of final [ǝ] also eliminated the distinction

between plural and singular adjectives. Although the letter e, which represented the

schwa vowel in spelling, continued to be written in many words, often haphazardly,

adjectives no longer had grammatical categories of number or definiteness. The

Modern English adjective thus came to be invariable in form. The only words that

still agree in number with the nouns they modify are the demonstratives this–these

and that–those.

Adjectives and adverbs continued to form comparatives with -er and superla-

tives with -est, but increasingly they used analytical comparison with mo(e) or

more and with most, which had occurred as early as Old English times. The form

mo(e), from Old English mā, continued in use through the early Modern English

period, as in Robert Greene’s A Maiden’s Dream (1591): “No foreign wit could

Hatton’s overgo: Yet to a friend wise, simple, and no mo.” It even lasted into the

nineteenth century in Byron’s Childe Harold (1812): “Ye . . . Shall find some tidings

in a future page, If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe.” The homophonous

and synonymous mo’ of African-American English has a different origin but is

similar in use.

The present stylistic objection to affixing -er and -est to polysyllables had some-

what less force in the early Modern English period, when forms like eminenter,

impudentest, and beautifullest are not particularly hard to find, nor, for that matter,

are monosyllables with more and most, like more near, more fast, most poor, and

most foul. As was true in earlier times also, a good many instances of double

comparison like more fitter, more better, more fairer, most worst, most stillest,

and (probably the best-known example) most unkindest occur in early Modern

English. Comparison could be made with the ending or with the modifying word

or, for emphasis, with both.

Many adverbs that now must end in -ly did not require the suffix in early

Modern English times. The works of Shakespeare furnish many typical examples:

grievous sick, indifferent cold, wondrous strange, and passing [‘surpassingly’] fair.

Note also the use of sure in the following citations, which some nowadays would

condemn as “bad English”: “If she come in, shee’l sure speake to my wife”

(Othello); “And sure deare friends my thankes are too deare a halfepeny” (Hamlet);

“Sure the Gods doe this yeere connive at us” (Winter’s Tale).

PRONOUNS

Important changes happened in the pronouns, which are the most highly inflected

part of speech in present-day English, thus preserving the earlier synthetic character

of our language in a small way.

Personal Pronouns

The early Modern English personal pronouns are shown in the accompanying

table.

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

165

Personal Pronouns of Early Modern English

Possessive

Nominative

Objective

Attributive

Nominal

Singular

1 pers.

I

me

my/mine

2 pers.

thou

thee

thy/thine

3 pers., masc.

he, a

him

his

fem.

she

her

her

hers

neut.

(h)it

(h)it

his, it, its

Plural

1 pers.

we

us

our

ours

2 pers.

ye/you

you/ye

your

yours

3 pers.

they

them, (h)em

their

theirs

I came to be capitalized, not through any egotism, but only because lower-

case i standing alone was likely to be overlooked, being the smallest letter of the

alphabet.

In the first and second persons singular, the distinction between my and mine

and between thy and thine was purely phonological (like the distinction between

a and an), as it had been in Middle English since the thirteenth century; that is,

mine and thine were used before a vowel, h, or a pause, and my and thy before a

consonant. This distinction continued to be made until the eighteenth century, when

my became the only regular first person possessive used attributively (as in “my

ear,” earlier “mine ear”). Thereafter mine was restricted to use as a nominal (as in

“That is mine,” “Mine is here,” and “Put it on mine”), just as the “s-forms” hers,

ours, yours, theirs had been since late Middle English times.

The distinction between attributive and nominal possessive forms thus spread

through most of the personal pronoun system. Today the only exceptions are his,

which uses the same form for both functions, and its, which has no nominal func-

tion: we do not usually say things like *“That is its” or *“Its is here.” (The asterisk

before a present-day form, as in the preceding, indicates that the form does not

exist, or at least that the writer believes it to be abnormal. This use of the asterisk

thus differs from that before historical reconstructions, where it means that the

form is not recorded although it or something like it probably did once exist. The

two uses agree in indicating that the form so marked is not attested.)

When the distinction between possessives with and without n was phonologi-

cal, a confusion sometimes arose about which word the n belonged with. The

Fool’s nuncle in King Lear is due to his misunderstanding of mine uncle as my nun-

cle, and it is likely that Ned, Nelly, and Noll (a nickname associated with Oliver

Goldsmith) have the same origin from mine Edward, mine Eleanor, and mine

Oliver. The confusion is similar to that which today produces a (whole) nother

from another (that is, an other).

The loss in ordinary language of singular thou, thee, and thy/thine created a

gap in the pronoun system that we have not yet repaired. That loss began with

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a shift in the use of thou and ye forms. As early as the late thirteenth century, the

plural forms ye, you, and your began to be used with singular meaning in circum-

stances of politeness or formality, leaving the singular forms (thou, thee, thy/thine)

for intimate, familiar use. In imitation of the French use of vous and tu, the

English historically plural y-forms were used in addressing a superior, whether by

virtue of social status or age, and in upper-class circles among equals, though

highborn lovers might slip into the th–forms in situations of intimacy. The

th-forms were also used by older to younger and by socially superior to socially

inferior. The distinction is retained in other languages, which may even have a

verb meaning ‘to use the singular form’—for example, French tutoyer, Spanish

tutear, Italian tuizzare, German dutzen. Late Middle English had thoute, with the

same meaning.

In losing this distinction, English obviously has lost a useful device, which our

older writers frequently employed with artistic discrimination, as in Hamlet:

Qu[een]

Hamlet, thou hast thy Father much offended.

Ham[let]

Mother, you have my Father much offended.

Qu[een]

Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

. . .

Qu[een]

What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murther me?

The Queen’s thou in the first line is what a parent would be expected to say to her

child. Hamlet’s “Mother, you have . . .” is appropriate from a son to his mother, but

there is more than a hint of a rebuff in her choice of the more formal pronoun

in “Come, come, you answer . . .,” and her return to thou in the last line suggests

that, in her alarm at Hamlet’s potential violence, she is reminding him of the paren-

tal relationship.

Elsewhere also Shakespeare chooses the y-forms and the th-forms with artistic

care, though it is sometimes difficult for a present-day reader, unaccustomed to the

niceties offered by a choice of forms, to figure him out, as in the dialogue between

two servants, the less imaginative Curtis and the sardonic Grumio, in The Taming

of the Shrew:

Cur[tis]

Doe you heare ho? you must meete my maister to countenance my mistris.

Gru[mio]

Why she hath a face of her owne.

Cur[tis]

Who knowes not that?

Gru[mio]

Thou it seemes. . . .

Curtis uses the polite you to Grumio, but when Curtis fails to understand Grumio’s

pun on countenance as a verb ‘to give support to’ and a noun ‘face,’ Grumio

responds with thou, which a superior uses to an inferior. However, the English

did not always use the two forms as consistently as the French. Sometimes they

seem to be random.

The th-forms, which had become quite rare in upper-class speech by the six-

teenth century, were completely lost in standard English in the eighteenth, though

they have lingered on in some dialects. We are familiar with them mainly in poetry

and religious language, especially the King James Bible. A few older-generation

members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) may still use th-forms when speaking

to one another, with thee serving as both subject and object.

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167

The third person singular masculine and feminine pronouns have been

relatively stable since late Old English times. The unstressed form of he was often

written a, as in “Now might I doe it, but now a is a-praying, / And now Ile doo’t,

and so a goes to heaven” from the Second Quarto of Hamlet. (The Folio has he in

both instances.) She and her(s) show no change since Middle English times.

In the neuter, however, an important change took place in the later part of the

sixteenth century, when the new possessive form its arose. The older nominative

and objective hit had lost its h- when unstressed; then the h-less form came to be

used in stressed as well as unstressed positions—though, as has already been

pointed out, hit, the form preferred by Queen Elizabeth I, remains in nonstandard

speech as a stressed form. The old neuter possessive his was still usual in the early

years of the seventeenth century, as in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida: “But

value dwels not in particular will, / It holds his estimate and dignitie.” The OED

cites an American example from 1634: “Boston is two miles North-east from

Roxberry: His situation is very pleasant.”

Perhaps because of its ambiguity, his was to some extent avoided as a neuter

possessive even in Middle English times: an uninflected it occurs from the four-

teenth to the seventeenth century, and to this day in British dialect usage. The

OED’s latest citation of it in standard English is from 1622: “Each part as faire

doth show / In it kind, as white in Snow.” Other efforts to replace the ambiguous

his as a possessive for it include paraphrases with thereof, as in “The earth is the

Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24), and of it, as in “Great was the fall of

it” (Matthew 7). The present-day form its (at first written it’s, as many people still

write it) began to be used by analogy with other possessives ending in ’s. Its is quite

rare in Shakespeare and occurs only twice in Milton’s Paradise Lost; but by the end

of the seventeenth century, its had become the usual form, completely displacing the

other options.

Similar to the use of the second person plural form to refer to a single person is

the “regal we,” except that it implies a sense of one’s own importance rather than

someone else’s. It has been used in proclamations by a sovereign, and to judge by

older drama, it was even used in royal conversation. Queen Victoria is said to be

the last monarch to employ it as a spoken form, as in her famous but doubtless

apocryphal reproof to one of her maids of honor who had told a mildly improper

story: “We are not amused.” The “editorial we” dates from Old English times. It is

sometimes used by one who is a member of a staff of writers, all assumed to share

the same opinions. It may also be used to include one’s readers in phrases like “as

we have seen.”

In the second person plural, the old distinction between nominative ye and

objective you was still maintained in the King James Bible—for example, “And ye

shall know the Trueth, and the Trueth shall make you free” (John 8). It was, how-

ever, generally lost during the sixteenth century, when some writers made the dis-

tinction, while others did not (Wyld 330). In time the objective you completely

replaced ye in standard English.

Present-day nonstandard speech distinguishes singular and plural you in a num-

ber of ways; examples include the nonstandard, analogical youse of northern

American urbanites (also current in Irish English) and the southern mountain you-

uns (that is, you ones), which probably stems from Scots English. You-all (or y’all)

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is in educated colloquial use in the Southern states and is the only new second

person plural to have acquired respectability in Modern English. You guys is a

recent gender-unspecific candidate, as is you lot among the British, though the last

has patronizing implications.

From the later seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth, many speak-

ers made a distinction between singular you was and plural you were. James Boswell

used singular you was throughout his London Journal (1762–3) and even reported it

as coming from the lips of Dr. Johnson: “Indeed, when you was in the irreligious

way, I should not have been pleased with you” (July 28, 1763); but in the second

edition of his Life of Johnson, he changed over to you were for both singular and

plural. Bishop Robert Lowth, in his very influential Short Introduction to English

Grammar (1762), condemned you was in no uncertain terms as “an enormous

Solecism,” but George Campbell testified in his Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776) that

“it is ten times oftener heard.” You was at one time was very common in cultivated

American use also: George Philip Krapp (English Language in America 2:261) cites

its use by John Adams in a letter of condolence to a friend whose house had burned

down: “You regret your loss; but why? Was you fond of seeing or thinking that

others saw and admired so stately a pile?” The construction became unfashionable

in the early nineteenth century.

In the third person plural, the native h-forms had become archaic by the end of

the fifteenth century, when the th-forms (they, them, their, theirs) gradually took

over. The single h-form to survive is the one earlier written hem, and it survives

only as an unstressed form, written ’em when it is written at all. The plural posses-

sives in h- (here, her, hir) occurred only very rarely after the beginning of the six-

teenth century.

Relative and Interrogative Pronouns

The usual Old English relative particle was þe, which had only one form. It is a pity

that it was ever lost. Middle English adapted the neuter demonstrative pronoun that,

without inflection, for the same relative function, later adding the previously interrog-

ative which, sometimes preceded by the, and also uninflected. It was not until the

sixteenth century that the originally interrogative who (OE hwā) came to be com-

monly used as a simple relative to refer to persons. It had somewhat earlier been put

to use as an indefinite relative, that is, as the equivalent of present who(m)ever, a use

now rare but one that can be seen in Shakespeare’s “Who tels me true, though in his

Tale lye death, / I heare him as he flatter’d” (Antony and Cleopatra) and Byron’s

“Whom the gods love die young” (Don Juan). The King James Bible, which we

should expect to be a little behind the times in its grammar, has which where today

we would use who, as in “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed

good seed in his field” (Matthew 13) and in “Our Father which art in heaven.” This

translation was the work of almost fifty theological scholars appointed by James I,

and it was afterward reviewed by the bishops and other eminent scholars. It is not

surprising that these men should have been little given to anything that smacked of

innovation. Shakespeare, who with all his daring as a coiner and user of words was

essentially conservative in his syntax, also uses which in the older fashion to refer to

persons and things alike, as in “he which hath your Noble Father slaine” (Hamlet).

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169

Case Forms of the Pronouns

In the freewheeling usage of earlier days, there was less concern than now with what are thought to be “proper” case forms. English had to wait until the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries for the rise of a prescriptive attitude toward language, which is

a relatively new thing. After a coordinating conjunction, for instance, the nominative

form tended to occur invariably, as indeed it still does, whether the pronoun is

object of verb or preposition or second element of a compound subject. H. C.

Wyld (332) cites “with you and I” from a letter by Sir John Suckling, to which

may be added Shakespeare’s “all debts are cleerd betweene you and I” (Merchant

of Venice). No doubt at the present time the desire to be “correct” causes many

speakers who may have been reproved as children for saying “Mary and me went

downtown” to use “Mary and I” under all circumstances; but hypercorrectness is

hardly a satisfactory explanation for the phenomenon because it occurs in the writ-

ings of well-bred people from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, a period

when people of consequence talked pretty much as they pleased.

Prescriptive grammar requires the nominative form after as and than in such sen-

tences as “Is she as tall as me?” (Antony and Cleopatra). Boswell, who wrote in a

period when men of strong minds and characters were attempting to “regularize”

the English language, shows no particular pattern of consistency in this construction.

In the entry in his London Journal for June 5, 1763, he writes “I was much stronger

than her,” but elsewhere uses the nominative form in the same construction. The

basic question for grammarians is whether than and as are to be regarded as prepo-

sitions, which would require the objective form consistently, or as subordinating con-

junctions, after which the choice of case form should be determined by expanding

the construction, as in “I know him better than she (knows him)” or “I know him

better than (I know) her.” Present-day prescriptivists opt for the second analysis, but

speakers tend to follow either, as the spirit moves them.

In early Modern English, the nominative and objective forms of the personal

pronouns, particularly I and me, tend to occur more or less indiscriminately after

the verb be. In Twelfth Night, for instance, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who, though a

fool, is yet a gentleman, uses both forms within a few lines: “That’s mee I warrant

you. . .. I knew ’twas I.” The generally inconsistent state of things is exemplified by

Shakespeare’s use of other pronouns as well: “I am not thee” (Timon of Athens);

“you are not he” (Love’s Labour’s Lost); “And damn’d be him, that first cries

hold, enough” (Macbeth); “you are she” (Twelfth Night). In “Here’s them”

(Pericles), them is functionally the subject, but the speaker is a fisherman.

Today also objective personal pronouns continue to occur after be, though not

without bringing down upon the head of the user the thunder of those who regard

themselves as guardians of the language. There are nevertheless a great many speak-

ers of standard English who do not care and who say “It’s me” when there is occa-

sion to do so, despite the doctrine that “the verb to be can never take an object.”

There is little point in labeling the construction colloquial or informal as contrasted

with a supposedly formal “It is I,” inasmuch as the utterance would not be likely to

occur alone anywhere except in conversation. If a following relative clause has am,

“It is I” would be usual, as in “It is I who am responsible,” though “It is me”

occurs before other relative clauses, as in “It’s me who’s responsible” and “It is

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me that he’s hunting.” What has been said of me after forms of be applies also to

us, him, her, and them.

The “proper” choice between who and whom, whether interrogative or rela-

tive, frequently involves an intellectual chore that many speakers from about 1500

on have been little concerned with. The interrogative pronoun, coming as it usually

does before the verb, tended in early Modern English to be invariably who, as it

still does in unselfconscious speech. Otto Jespersen cites interrogative who as object

before the verb from Marlowe, Greene, Ben Jonson, the old Spectator of Addison

and Steele, Goldsmith, and Sheridan, with later examples from Thackeray, Mrs.

Humphry Ward, and Shaw. Alexander Schmidt’s Shakespeare-Lexicon furnishes

fifteen quotations for interrogative who in this construction and then adds an

“etc.,” though, as Jespersen (Modern English Grammar 7:242) points out, “Most

modern editors and reprinters add the -m everywhere in accordance with the rules

of ‘orthodox’ grammar.” Compare his earlier and somewhat bitter statement that

they show thereby “that they hold in greater awe the schoolmasters of their own

childhood than the poet of all the ages” (Progress in Language 216). It is an amus-

ing irony that whom-sleuths, imagining that they are great traditionalists, are actu-

ally adhering to a fairly recent standard as far as the period from the fifteenth

century on is concerned. In view of the facts, such a sentence as “Who are you

waiting for?” can hardly be considered untraditional.

Relative who as object of verb or preposition is also frequent. For Shakespeare,

Schmidt uses the label “etc.” after citing a dozen instances, and Jespersen cites from

a few other authors. The OED reports that whom as an object is “no longer cur-

rent in natural colloquial speech.” There are, however, a good many instances of

whom for the nominative, especially as a relative that may be taken as the object

of the main-clause verb, as in Matthew 16: “Whom do men say that I the Son of

man am?” Both Shakespeare’s “Whom in constancie you thinke stands so safe”

(Cymbeline) and “Yong Ferdinand (whom they suppose is droun’d)” (Tempest)

would be condemned by all prescriptive grammarians nowadays. But Shakespeare,

who is representative of early Modern English, uses such constructions alongside

others with the “approved” form of the construction, such as “I should do Brutus

wrong, and Cassius wrong: / who (you all know) are Honourable men” (Julius

Caesar). The “incorrect” use of whom occurs very frequently during the whole

Modern English period. Jespersen, whose Modern English Grammar is a storehouse

of illustrative material, has many examples ranging from Chaucer to the present

day (3:198–9), and Sir Ernest Gowers cites instances from E. M. Forster, Lord

David Cecil, the Times, and Somerset Maugham, all of which might be presumed

to be standard English.

VERBS

Classes of Strong Verbs

Throughout the history of English, strong verbs—always a minority—have fought

a losing battle, either joining the ranks of the weak verbs or being lost altogether.

In those strong verbs that survive, the Old English four principal parts (infinitive,

preterit singular, preterit plural, past participle) have been reduced to three, with

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171

the new preterit from either the old singular or the old plural. Only a few verbs

show regular development, so the orderly arrangement into classes that prevailed

in the older periods is now history. Indeed, today the distinction between strong

and weak verbs is less important than that between regular verbs, all of which are

weak (like talk, talked, talked), and irregular verbs, which may be either strong

(like sing, sang, sung) or weak (like think, thought, thought). The following brief

account of the Modern English development of the seven classes of Old English

strong verbs is thus now a purely historical matter.

Class I remains rather clearly defined. The regular development of this class,

with the Modern English preterit from the old preterit singular, is illustrated by

the following:

drive

drove

driven

ride

rode

ridden

rise

rose

risen

smite

smote

smitten

stride

strode

stridden

strive

strove

striven

thrive

throve

thriven

write

wrote

written

Also phonologically regular, but with the Modern English preterit from the old

preterit plural (whose vowel was identical with that of the past participle), are the

following, of which chide and hide are originally weak verbs that have become

strong by analogy:

bite

bit

bitten

chide

chid

chidden

hide

hid

hidden

slide

slid

slid(den)

The following verbs, on the contrary, have a vowel in the preterit and past partici-

ple derived from the old preterit singular:

abide

abode

abode

shine

shone

shone

Dive–dove (dived)–dived is another weak verb that has acquired a strong preterit.

Strike–struck–struck has a preterit of uncertain origin; the regularly developed past

participle stricken is now used only metaphorically.

In early Modern English many of these verbs had alternative forms, some of

which survive either in standard use or in the dialects, whereas others are now

archaic. There is a Northern form for the preterit of drive in “And I delivered you

out of the hand of the Egyptians . . . and drave them out from before you” (Judges

6). Other now nonstandard forms are represented by “And the people chode

[chided] with Moses” (Numbers 20) and “I imagined that your father had wrote

in such a way” (Boswell, London Journal, December 30, 1762). Other verbs of

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this class have become weak (for example, glide, gripe, spew, and writhe). Still

others have disappeared altogether from the language.

The verbs of Class II have likewise undergone many changes in the course of

their development into their present forms. Only a handful survive, of which the

following have taken their preterit vowel from the old past participle:

choose

chose

chosen

cleave

clove

cloven

freeze

froze

frozen

Fly–flew–flown has a preterit formed perhaps by analogy with Class VII verbs.

A development of the Old English past participle of freeze is used as an archa-

ism in Shelley’s “Snow-fed streams now seen athwart frore [frozen] vapours,”

which the OED suggests is a reflection of Milton’s “The parching Air Burns

frore” (Paradise Lost). Other variant forms are in “This word (Rebellion) it had

froze them up” (2 Henry IV); “O what a time have you chose out brave Caius /

To weare a Kerchiefe” (Julius Caesar); and “Certain men clave to Paul” (Acts 17).

The following surviving verbs of Class II are now weak: bow ‘bend,’ brew, chew,

creep, crowd, flee, lie ‘prevaricate,’ lose, reek, rue, seethe, shove, sprout, and suck.

Sodden, the old strong participle of seethe (with voicing according to Verner’s Law),

is still sometimes used as an adjective. Crope, a strong preterit of creep, occurs in for-

mal English as late as the eighteenth century and in folk speech to the present day.

Practically all verbs of Class III with nasal consonants that have survived from

Old English have retained their strong inflection. The following derive their preterit

from the old preterit singular:

begin

began

begun

drink

drank

drunk

ring

rang

rung

shrink

shrank

shrunk

sing

sang

sung

sink

sank

sunk

spring

sprang

sprung

stink

stank

stunk

swim

swam

swum

In run–ran–run (ME infinitive rinnen) the vowel of the participle was in early

Modern English extended into the present tense; run is otherwise like the preceding

verbs. In the following, the modern preterit vowel is from the old preterit plural and

past participle:

cling

clung

clung

slink

slunk

slunk

spin

spun

spun

sting

stung

stung

swing

swung

swung

win

won

won

wring

wrung

wrung

A few verbs entering the language after Old English times have conformed to

this pattern—for example, fling, sling, and string. By the same sort of analogy, the

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173

weak verb bring has acquired in nonstandard speech the strong preterit and parti-

cipial form brung. Though lacking the nasal, dig (not of Old English origin) and

stick, which at first had weak inflection, have taken on the same pattern.

The consonant cluster -nd had early lengthened a preceding vowel, so the prin-

cipal parts of the following verbs, although quite different in their vowels from

those of the preceding group, have the same historical development:

bind

bound

bound

find

found

found

grind

ground

ground

wind

wound

wound

Allowing for the influence of Middle English [ç, x] (spelled h or gh) on a pre-

ceding vowel, fight–fought–fought also has a regular development into Modern

English. All other surviving verbs of this class have become weak (some having

done so in Middle English times): bark, braid, burn, burst (also with an invariant

preterit and participle), carve, climb, delve, help, melt, mourn, spurn, starve, swal-

low, swell, yell, yelp, and yield. The old participial forms molten and swollen are

still used but only as adjectives. Holp, an old strong preterit of help, was common

until the seventeenth century and survives in current nonstandard usage. The old

participial form holpen is used in the King James Bible—for instance, in “He hath

holpen his servant Israel” (Luke 1).

Most surviving Class IV verbs have borrowed the vowel of the old past partici-

ple for their preterit:

break

broke

broken

speak

spoke

spoken

steal

stole

stolen

weave

wove

woven

Verbs with an [r] after the vowel follow the same pattern, although the [r] has

affected the quality of the preceding vowel in the infinitive:

bear

bore

borne

shear

shore

shorn

swear

swore

sworn

tear

tore

torn

wear

wore

worn

The last was originally a weak verb; it acquired strong principal parts by analogy

with the verbs of Class IV that it rimed with.

Get was a loanword from Scandinavian. It and tread (like speak, originally a

Class V verb) have shortened vowels in all their principal parts:

get

got

got(ten)

tread

trod

trodden

Come–came–come has regular phonological development from the Middle

English verb, whose principal parts were, however, already irregular in form. A var-

iant preterit come was frequent in early Modern English—for example, in Pepys’s

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Diary: “Creed come and dined with me” (June 15, 1666), although Pepys also uses

came; today the variant occurs mainly in folk speech. Variant preterits for other

verbs were also common in early Modern English, as in “When I was a child, I

spake as a child” (I Corinthians 13); “And when he went forth to land, there met

him . . . a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes” (Luke 8);

“And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven,

and blessed, and brake the loaves” (Mark 6); “And they brought him unto him; and

when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him” (Mark 9).

Verbs of Class V have all diverged in one way or another from what might be

considered regular development. Eat–ate–eaten has in its preterit a lengthened form

of the vowel of the Middle English preterit singular (which, if it had survived into

Modern English, would have been *at). The preterit in British English, although it

is spelled like the American form, is pronounced in a way that would be better

represented as et; it is derived perhaps by analogy with the preterit read.

Bid and forbid have two preterits in current English. (For)bade, traditionally

pronounced [bæd] but now often [bed] from the spelling, was originally a length-

ened form of the Middle English preterit singular. The preterit (for)bid has its

vowel from the past participle, which, in turn, probably borrowed it from the

present stem, by analogy with verbs that have the same vowel in those two

forms.

Give–gave–given is a Scandinavian loanword that displaced the native English

form. (The latter appears, for example, in Chaucer’s use as yeven–yaf–yeven.)

Variants are evidenced by Pepys’s “This day I sent my cozen Roger a tierce of

claret, which I give him” (August 21, 1667) and Shakespeare’s “When he did

frown, O, had she then gave over” (Venus and Adonis).

Sit had in early Modern English the preterit forms sat, sate, and (occasionally)

sit; its participial forms were sitten, sit, sat, and sate. Sit and set were confused as

early as the fourteenth century, and continue to be. A nonstandard form sot occurs

as preterit and participle of both verbs.

The confusion of lie–lay–lain and lay–laid–laid is as old as that of sit and set.

The intransitive use of lay, according to the OED, “was not app[arently] regarded

as a solecism” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It has been so used by

some very important writers, including Francis Bacon and Lord Byron—for exam-

ple, in “There let him lay” (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage). The brothers H. W. and F.

G. Fowler (49) cited with apparently delighted disapproval “I suspected him of hav-

ing laid in wait for the purpose” from the writing of Richard Grant White, the emi-

nent nineteenth-century American purist—for purists love above all to catch other

purists in some supposed sin against English grammar. Today the two verbs are so

thoroughly confused that their forms are often freely interchanged, as in the follow-

ing description of a modern dancer, who “lay down again; then raised the upper

part of his body once more and stared upstage at the brick wall; then laid down

again” (Illustrated London News).

See–saw–seen has normal development of the Middle English forms of the verb.

Some dialects have the alternative preterits see, seed, and seen.

Other surviving Class V verbs have become weak: bequeath, fret, knead, mete,

reap, scrape, weigh, and wreak.

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175

Some verbs from Class VI (including take, a Scandinavian loanword that

ultimately ousted its Old English synonym niman from the language) show regular

development:

forsake

forsook

forsaken

shake

shook

shaken

take

took

taken

Early Modern English frequently used the preterit of these verbs as a participle, as

in Shakespeare’s “Save what is had or must from you be took” (Sonnet 75), “Have

from the forests shook three summers’ pride” (Sonnet 104), and “Hath she for-

sooke so many Noble Matches?” (Othello). Stand (and the compound understand)

has lost its old participle standen; the preterit form stood has served as a participle

since the sixteenth century, though not exclusively. Stand also occurs as a participle,

as does a weak form standed, as in “a tongue not understanded of the people” in

the fourteenth Article of Religion of the Anglican Communion. Two verbs of this

class have formed their preterits by analogy with Class VII:

slay

slew

slain

draw

drew

drawn

Other surviving verbs of this class have become weak: fare, flay, gnaw, (en)grave,

heave, lade, laugh, shave, step, wade, and wash. But strong participial forms laden

and shaven survive as adjectives, and heave has an alternative strong preterit hove.

Several verbs of Class VII show regular development:

blow

blew

blown

grow

grew

grown

know

knew

known

throw

threw

thrown

Another, crow–crew–crowed, has a normally developed preterit that is now rare in

American use, but it has only a weak participle. Two other verbs also have normal

phonological development, although the vowels of their principal parts are different

from those above:

fall

fell

fallen

beat

beat

beaten

Hold–held–held has borrowed its Modern English participle from the Middle

English preterit. The original participle is preserved in the old-fashioned beholden.

Modern English hang–hung–hung is a mixture of three Middle English verbs: hōn

(Class VII), hangen (weak), and hengen (a Scandinavian loan). The alternative weak

preterit and participle, hanged, is frequent in reference to capital punishment,

though it is by no means universally so used.

Let, originally a member of this class, now has unchanged principal parts. Other

verbs surviving from the group have become weak; two of them did so as early as

Old English times: dread, flow, fold, hew, leap, mow, read (OE preterit rǣdde),

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row, sleep (OE preterit slēpte), sow, span ‘join,’ walk, wax ‘grow,’ and weep. Strong

participial forms sown, mown, and hewn survive, mainly as adjectives.

Endings for Person and Number

The personal endings of early Modern English verbs were somewhat simplified

from those of Middle English, with the loss of -e as an ending for the first person

singular in the present indicative (making that form identical with the infinitive,

which had lost its final -n and then its -e): I sit (to sit) from Middle English ich

sitte (to sitten). Otherwise, however, the early Modern English verb preserved a

number of personal endings that have since disappeared, and it had, especially

early in the period, several variants for some of the persons:

Present

Preterit

I

sit

sat

thou

sittest, sitst

sat, sattest, satst

he, she

sitteth, sits

sat

we, you, they

sit

sat

The early Modern English third person singular varied between -(e)s and -(e)th.

From the beginning of the seventeenth century the -s form began to prevail, though

for a while the two forms could be used interchangeably, particularly in verse, as in

Shakespeare’s “Sometime she driveth ore a Souldiers necke, & then dreames he of

cutting Forraine throats” (Romeo and Juliet). But doth and hath lasted until well

into the eighteenth century, and the King James Bible uses only -th forms. The -s

forms are due to Northern dialect influence.

Third person plural forms occasionally end in -s, also of Northern provenience, as

in “Where lo, two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies” (Venus and Adonis). These

should not be regarded as “ungrammatical” uses of the singular for the plural form,

although analogy with the singular may have played a part in extending the ending -s

to the plural, as is certainly the case with the first and second persons of naive racon-

teurs—“I says” and “says I”—and of the rude expression of disbelief “Sez you!”

The early Modern English preterit ending for the second person singular, -(e)st,

began to be lost in the sixteenth century. Thus the preterit tense became invariable,

as it is today, except for the verb be.

The verb be, always the most irregular of English verbs, had the following

personal inflections in the early Modern period:

Present

Preterit

I

am

was

thou

art

were, wast, werst, wert

he, she

is

was

we, you, they

are, be

were

The plural be was widely current as late as the seventeenth century; Eilert

Ekwall (History of Modern English Sounds and Morphology 118) cites “the powers

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

177

that be” as a survival of it. The preterit second person singular was were until the

sixteenth century, when the forms wast, werst, and wert began to occur, the last

remaining current in literature throughout the eighteenth century. Nineteenth-

century poets were also very fond of it (“Bird thou never wert”); it gave a certain

archaically spiritual tone to their writing that they presumably considered desirable.

Wast and wert are by analogy with present-tense art. In werst, the s of wast has

apparently been extended. The locution you was is covered earlier (167–8).

Of the other highly irregular verbs, little need be said. Could, the preterit of

can, acquired its unetymological l in the sixteenth century by analogy with would

and should. Early Modern English forms that differed from those now current are

durst (surviving only in dialect use) as preterit of dare, which otherwise had become

weak; mought, a variant of might; and mowe, an occasional present plural form of

may. Will had early variants wull and woll.

Contracted Forms

Most of our verbs with contracted -n’t first occur in writing in the seventeenth

century. It is likely that all were spoken long before ever getting written down, for

contractions are in their very nature colloquial and thus are infrequent in writing.

Won’t is from wol(l) not. Don’t presents several problems. One would expect the

pronunciation [dunt] from do [du] plus the contracted [nt] for not. Jespersen

(1909–49, 5:431) suggests that the [o] of don’t is analogical with that of won’t.

Whatever the origin of [o] in don’t, the OED records third person don’t in 1670,

but doesn’t not until 1818. It appears that it don’t is not a “corruption” of it

doesn’t, but the older form. The OED derives third person don’t from he (she, it)

do, and it cites instances of the latter from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

including Pepys’s “Sir Arthur Haselrigge do not yet appear in the House” (March 2,

1660).

An’t [ænt] for am (are, is) not is apparently of late seventeenth-century origin;

the variant ain’t occurs about a century later. With the eighteenth-century British

English shifting of [æ] to [ɑ] as in ask, path, dance, and the like, the pronunciation

of an’t shifted to [ɑnt]. At the same time, preconsonantal [r] was lost, thus making

an’t and aren’t homophones. As a result, the two words were confused, even by

those, including most Americans, who pronounce r before a consonant. Aren’t I?

(originally a mistake for an’t I? ‘am I not?’) has gained ground among those who

regard ain’t as a linguistic mortal sin. Although ain’t has fallen victim to a series

of schoolteachers’ crusades, Henry Alford (1810–71), dean of Canterbury, testified

that in his day “It ain’t certain” and “I ain’t going” were “very frequently used,

even by highly educated persons,” and Frederick James Furnivall (1825–1910), an

early editor of the OED and founder of the Chaucer Society and the Early English

Text Society, is said to have used the form ain’t habitually (Jespersen 1909–49,

5:434). Despite its current reputation as a shibboleth of uneducated speech, ain’t is

still used by many cultivated speakers in informal circumstances.

Contractions of auxiliary verbs without not occur somewhat earlier than forms

with -n’t, though they must be about equally old. It’s as a written form is from the

seventeenth century and ultimately drove out ’tis, in which the pronoun rather than

the verb is reduced. There is no current contraction of it was to replace older ’twas,

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and, in the light of the practical disappearance of the subjunctive, it is not surpris-

ing that there is none for it were.

It’ll has replaced older ’twill; will similarly is contracted after other pronouns

and, in speech, after other words as well. In older times ’ll, usually written le (as

in Ile, youle), occurred only after vowels and was hence not syllabic, as it must be

after consonants. Would is contracted as early as the late sixteenth century as ’ld,

later becoming ’d, which came in the eighteenth century to be used for had also.

The contraction of have written ’ve likewise seems to have occurred first in the

eighteenth century. After a consonant, this contraction is identical in pronunciation

with unstressed of (compare “the wood of the tree” and “He would’ve done it”),

hence such uneducated spellings as would of and should of frequently are written

in literary eye dialect to indicate that the speaker is unschooled. (The point seems

to be “This is the way the speaker would write have if obliged to do so.”) As indic-

ative of pronunciation the spelling is pointless.

Expanded Verb Forms

Progressive verb forms, consisting of a form of be plus a present participle (“I am

working”), occur occasionally in Old English but are rare before the fifteenth cen-

tury and remain relatively infrequent until the seventeenth. The progressive passive,

as in “He is being punished,” does not occur until the later part of the eighteenth

century. Pepys, for instance, writes “to Hales’s the painter, thinking to have found

Harris sitting there for his picture, which is drawing for me” (April 26, 1668),

where we would use is being drawn.

In early Modern English, verbs of motion or becoming frequently use be

instead of have in their perfect forms: “is risen,” “are entered in the Roman territo-

ries,” “were safe arrived,” “is turned white.”

Do is frequently used as a verbal auxiliary, though it is used somewhat differ-

ently from the way it is used today—for example, “I do wonder, his insolence can

brooke to be commanded” (Coriolanus) and “The Serpent that did sting thy

Fathers life / Now weares his Crowne” (Hamlet), where current English would not

use it at all. Compare with these instances “A Nun of winters sisterhood kisses not

more religiouslie” (As You Like It), where we would say does not kiss, and “What

say the citizens?” (Richard III), where we would use do the citizens say. In present-

day English, when there is no other auxiliary, do is obligatory in negative state-

ments, in questions, and in emphatic contradictions (“Despite the weather report,

it did rain”). In early Modern English, however, do was optional in any sentence

that had no other auxiliary. Thus one finds all constructions both with and without

it: He fell or He did fall, Forbid them not or Do not forbid them, Comes he? or

Does he come?

In Old and Middle English times shall and will were sometimes used to express

simple futurity, though as a rule they implied, respectively, obligation and volition.

The present-day distinction prescribed for these words was first codified by John

Wallis, an eminent professor of geometry at Oxford who wrote a grammar of the

English language in Latin (Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae, 1653). His rule was

that, to express a future event without emotional overtones, one should say I or

the early modern english period (1500–1800)

179

we shall, but you, he, she, or they will; conversely, for emphasis, willfulness, or

insistence, one should say I or we will, but you, he, she, or they shall. This rule

has never been ubiquitous in the English-speaking world. Despite a crusade of

more than three centuries to promote the rule, the distinction it prescribes is still

largely a mystery to most Americans, who get along very well in expressing futurity

and willfulness without it.

Other Verbal Constructions

Impersonal and reflexive constructions were fairly frequent in early Modern English

and were even more so in Middle English. Shakespeare used, for instance, the imper-

sonal constructions “it dislikes [displeases] me,” “methinks,” “it yearns [grieves]

me” and the reflexives “I complain me,” “how dost thou feel thyself now?” “I

doubt me,” “I repent me,” and “give me leave to retire myself.”

Some now intransitive verbs were used transitively, as in “despair [of] thy

charm,” “give me leave to speak [of] him,” and “Smile you [at] my speeches.”

PREPOSITIONS

With the Middle English loss of all distinctive inflectional endings for the noun

except genitive and plural -s, prepositions acquired a somewhat greater importance

than they had had in Old English. Their number consequently increased during the

late Middle and early Modern periods. Changes in the uses of certain prepositions

are illustrated by the practice of Shakespeare: “And what delight shall she have

to looke on [at] the divell?” (Othello); “He came of [on] an errand to mee” (Merry

Wives); “But thou wilt be aveng’d on [for] my misdeeds” (Richard III); “’Twas from

[against] the Cannon [canon]” (Coriolanus); “We are such stuffe / As dreames are

made on [of]” (Tempest); “Then speake the truth by [of] her” (Two Gentlemen);

“. . . that our armies joyn not in [on] a hot day” (2 Henry IV).

Even in Old English times, on was sometimes reduced in compound words like

abūtan (now about), a variant of on būtan ‘on the outside of.’ The reduced form

appears in early Modern English aboard, afield, abed, and asleep, and with verbal

nouns in -ing (a-hunting, a-bleeding, a-praying). The a of “twice a day” and other

such expressions has the same origin. In was sometimes contracted to i’, as in

Shakespeare’s “i’ the head,” “i’ God’s name,” and so forth. This particular contrac-

tion was much later fondly affected by Robert Browning, who doubtless thought it

singularly archaic—for example, “would not sink i’ the scale” and “This rage was

right i’ the main” (“Rabbi Ben Ezra”).

EARLY MODERN ENGLISH FURTHER ILLUSTRATED

The following passages are from the King James Bible, published in 1611. They are

the opening verses from chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis and the parable of the Prodigal

Son (Luke 15). The punctuation and spelling of the original have been retained, but

a present-day type face has been used.

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I. Genesis 1.1–5.

1. In the beginning God created the Heaven, and the Earth.

2. And the earth was

without forme, and voyd, and darkenesse was vpon the face of the deepe: and the

Spirit of God mooued vpon the face of the waters.

3. And God said, Let there be

light: and there was light.

4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God

diuided the light from the darkenesse.

5. And God called the light, Day, and the

darknesse he called Night: and the euening and the morning were the first day.

II. Genesis 2.1–3.

1. Thus the heauens and the earth were finished, and all the hoste of them.

2. And

on the seuenth day God ended his worke, which hee had made: And he rested on

the seuenth day from all his worke, which he had made.

3. And God blessed the

seuenth day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his worke,

which God created and made.

III. Luke 15.11–17, 20–24.

11. A certaine man had two sonnes:

12. And the yonger of them said to his father,

Father, giue me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he diuided vnto them

his liuing.

13. And not many dayes after, the yonger sonne gathered al together,

and tooke his iourney into a farre countrey, and there wasted his substance with

riotous liuing.

14. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in

that land, and he beganne to be in want. 15. And he went and ioyned himselfe to

a citizen of that countrey, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

16. And he

would faine haue filled his belly with the huskes that the swine did eate: and no man

gaue vnto him. 17. And when he came to himselfe, he said, How many hired

seruants of my fathers haue bread inough and to spare and I perish with hun-

ger. . .. 20. And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way

off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ranne, and fell on his necke, and

kissed him.

21. And the sonne said vnto him, Father, I have sinned against heauen,

and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy sonne. 22. But the father

saide to his seruants, Bring foorth the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on

his hand, and shooes on his feete. 23. And bring hither the fatted calfe, and kill it,

and let us eate and be merrie. 24. For this my sonne was dead, and is aliue againe;

hee was lost, and is found.

FOR FURTHER READING

See the list in Chapter 7.

±±±±±±

Late Modern

±±±±±±

9

± C H A P T E R

±±±±

English

±

(1800–Present)

The history of English since 1800 has been a story of expansion—in geography, in

speakers, and in the purposes for which English is used. Geographically, English

was spread around the world, first by British colonization and empire-building,

and more recently by American activities in world affairs. Braj Kachru has pro-

posed three circles of English: an inner circle of native speakers in countries where

English is the primary language, an outer circle of second-language speakers in

countries where English has wide use alongside native official languages, and an

expanding circle of foreign-language speakers in countries where English has no

official standing but is used for ever-increasing special purposes.

SOME KEY EVENTS IN THE LATE MODERN PERIOD

The following events during recent centuries significantly influenced the develop-

ment of the English language.

• 1803 The Louisiana Purchase acquired U.S. territory beyond the Mississippi

River, ultimately resulting in westward expansion to the Pacific Ocean.

• 1805 A victory over the French at the battle of Trafalgar established British

naval supremacy.

• 1806 The British occupied Cape Colony in South Africa, thus preparing the

way for the arrival in 1820 of a large number of British settlers.

• 1828 Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language was

published.

• 1840 In New Zealand, by the Treaty of Waitangi, native Maori ceded

sovereignty to the British crown.

• 1857 A proposal at the Philological Society of London led to work that

resulted in the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (1928), reissued

as the Oxford English Dictionary (1933), 2nd edition 1989, now revised online.

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• 1858 The Government of India Act transferred power from the East India

Company to the crown, thus creating the British Raj in India.

• 1861–5 The American Civil War established the indissolubility of the Union

and abolished slavery in America.

• 1898 The four-month Spanish-American War made the United States a world

power with overseas possessions and thus a major participant in international

politics.

• 1906 The first public radio broadcast was aired, leading in 1920 to the first

American commercial radio station in Pittsburgh.

• 1914–18 World War I created an alliance between the United States and the

United Kingdom.

• 1922 The British Broadcasting Company (after 1927, Corporation) was

established and became a major conveyor of information in English around the

world.

• 1927 The first motion picture with spoken dialog, The Jazz Singer, was

released.

• 1936 The first high-definition television service was established by the BBC,

to be followed by cable service in the early 1950s and satellite service in the

early 1960s.

• 1939–45 World War II further solidified the British-American link.

• 1945 The charter of the United Nations was produced at San Francisco,

leading to the establishment of UN headquarters in New York City.

• 1947 British India was divided into India and Pakistan, and both were

given independence.

• 1961 Merriam Webster’s Third New International Dictionary was

published.

• 1983 The Internet was created.

• 1992 The first Web browser for the World Wide Web was released.

• 2007 An estimated 363 billion text messages were sent in the United States,

429 billion in China, and 2.3 trillion world wide.

THE NATIONAL VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

The world’s total number of English speakers may be more than a billion, although

competence varies greatly and exact numbers are elusive. The two major national

varieties of English—in historical precedent, in number of speakers, and in influ-

ence—are those of the United Kingdom and the United States—British English and

American English. Together they account for upwards of 400 million speakers of

English, with the United States having approximately four times the population of

the United Kingdom. Other countries in which English is the major language with a

sizable body of speakers are Australia, Canada, India, the Irish Republic, New

Zealand, and South Africa—the inner circle of English. But English is or has been

an official language in other parts of the Americas (Belize, the Falklands, Guyana,

Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies), Europe (Gibraltar, Malta), Africa

(Cameroon, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius,

Nigeria, Sierra Leone, the Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe),

late modern english (1800–present)

183

Asia (Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Pakistan, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka),

and Oceania (Borneo, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Philippines)—the outer circle.

English also plays a significant role in many other countries around the globe as a

commercial, technical, or cultural language—the expanding circle.

Despite its vast geographical spread, English in all of its major national varie-

ties has remained remarkably uniform. There are, to be sure, differences between

national varieties, just as there are variations within them, but those differences

are insignificant compared with the similarities. English is unmistakably one lan-

guage, with two major national varieties: British and American.

Of those two varieties, British English has long enjoyed greater prestige in

western Europe and some other places around the world. Its prestige is doubtless

based partly on its use as the language of the former British Empire and partly on

its centuries of great literary works. The prestige of British English is often assessed,

however, in terms of its “purity” (a baseless notion) or its elegance and style (highly

subjective but nonetheless powerful concepts). Even those Americans who are put

off by “posh accents” may be impressed by them and hence likely to suppose that

standard British English is somehow “better” English than their own variety. From

a purely linguistic point of view, this is nonsense; but it is a safe bet that it will

survive any past or future loss of British influence in world affairs.

Yet despite the historical prestige of British, today American English has become

the most important and influential dialect of the language. Its influence is exerted

through films, television, popular music, the Internet and the World Wide Web, air travel

and control, commerce, scientific publications, economic and military assistance, and

activities of the United States in world affairs, even when those activities are unpopular.

The coverage of the world by English was begun by colonization culminating in

the British Empire, which colored the globe pink, as a popular saying had it, allud-

ing to the use of that color on maps to identify British territories. The baton of

influence was passed about the middle of the twentieth century, however, to the

United States. Although no one had planned this development, English has become

(somewhat improbably, considering its modest beginnings on the North Sea coast

of Europe) the world language of our time.

Conservatism and Innovation in American English

Since language undergoes no sea change as a result of crossing an ocean, the first

English-speaking colonists in America continued to speak as they had in England.

But the language gradually changed on both sides of the Atlantic, in England as

well as in America. The new conditions facing the colonists in America naturally

caused changes in their language. However, the English now spoken in America

has retained a good many characteristics of earlier English that have not survived

in contemporary British English.

Thus to regard American English as inferior to British English is to impugn

earlier standard English as well, for there was doubtless little difference at the time

of the Revolution. There is a strong likelihood, for instance, that George III and

Lord Cornwallis pronounced after, ask, dance, glass, path, and the like exactly as

George Washington and John Hancock did—that is, as the overwhelming majority

of Americans do to this day, with [æ] rather than the [α] of present-day British.

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It was similar with the treatment of r, whose loss before consonants and pauses

(as in bird [bǝ:d] and burr [bǝ:]) did not occur in the speech of London until about

the time of the Revolution. Most Americans pronounce r where it is spelled because

English speakers in the motherland did so at the time of the settlement of America.

In this as in much else, especially in pronunciation and grammar, American English

is, on the whole, more conservative than British English. When [r] was eventually

lost in British English except before vowels, that loss was imported to the areas

that had the most immediate contact with England—the port cities of Boston,

New York, and Charleston—and it spread from those ports to their immediate

areas, but not elsewhere.

Other supposed characteristics of American English are also to be found in pre-

Revolutionary British English, and there is very good reason indeed for the conclu-

sion of the Swedish Anglicist Eilert Ekwall (American and British Pronunciation,

32–3) that, from the time of the Revolution on, “American pronunciation has

been on the whole independent of British; the result has been that American pro-

nunciation has not come to share the development undergone later by Standard

British.” Ekwall’s concern is exclusively with pronunciation, but the same principle

applies also to many lexical and grammatical characteristics.

American retention of gotten is an example of grammatical conservatism. This

form, the usual past participle of get in older British English, survives in present stan-

dard British English mainly in the phrase “ill-gotten gains”; but it is very much alive

in American English, being the usual past participial form of the verb (for instance,

“Every day this month I’ve gotten spam on my e-mail”), except in the senses ‘to have’

and ‘to be obliged to’ (for instance, “He hasn’t got the nerve to do it” and “She’s got to

help us.”). Similarly, American English has kept fall for the season and deck for a pack

of cards (though American English also uses autumn and pack); and it has retained

certain phonological characteristics of earlier British English, discussed later.

It works both ways, however; for American English has also lost certain

features—mostly vocabulary items—that have survived in British English. Examples

include waistcoat (the name for a garment that Americans usually call a vest, a

word that in England usually means ‘undershirt’); fortnight ‘two weeks,’ a useful

term completely lost to American English; and a number of topographical terms

that Americans had no need for—words like copse, dell, fen, heath, moor, spinney,

and wold. Americans, on the other hand, desperately needed terms to designate

topographical features different from any known in the Old World. To remedy the

deficiency, they used new compounds of English words like backwoods and under-

brush; they adapted English words to new uses, like creek, in British English ‘an

inlet on the sea,’ which in American English may mean ‘any small stream’; and

they adopted foreign words like canyon (Sp. cañón ‘tube’), mesa (Sp. ‘table’), and

prairie (Fr. ‘meadow’).

It was similar with the naming of flora and fauna strange to the colonists. When

they saw a bird that resembled the English robin, they simply called it a robin,

though it was not the same bird at all. When they saw an animal that was totally

unlike anything that they had ever seen before, they might call it by its Indian

name, if they could find out what that was—for example, raccoon and woodchuck.

So also with the names of plants: catalpa ‘a kind of tree’ and catawba ‘a variety of

grape’ are of Muskogean origin. Otherwise, they relied on their imagination: sweet

late modern english (1800–present)

185

potato might have originated just as well in England as in America except for the

fact that this particular variety of potato did not exist in England.

On the whole, though, American English is a conservative descendant of the

seventeenth-century English that also spawned present-day British. Except in vocab-

ulary, there are probably few significant characteristics of New World English that

are not traceable to the British Isles, including British regional dialects. However, a

majority of the English men and women who settled in the New World were not

illiterate bumpkins, but ambitious and industrious members of the upper-lower and

lower-middle classes, with a sprinkling of the well-educated—clergymen, lawyers—

and even a few younger sons of the aristocracy. For that reason, American English

resembles present standard British English more closely than it does any other

British type of speech.

NATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN WORD CHOICE

There are many lists of equivalent British and American words, but they must not be

taken too seriously. Many American locutions are perfectly well understood and

used in Britain. For instance, automobile, said to be the American equivalent of

British car or motor car, is practically a formal word in America, the ordinary term

being car; moreover, the supposedly American word occurs in the names of two

English motoring organizations, the Royal Automobile Club and the Automobile

Association. Similarly, many British locutions are known and frequently used in

America—for instance, postman (as in James M. Cain’s very American novel The

Postman Always Rings Twice) and railway (as in Railway Express and the

Southern Railway), though it is certain that mailman (or today letter carrier) and

railroad do occur more frequently in America. Similarly, one finds baggage listed as

the American equivalent of British luggage, though Americans usually buy “luggage”

rather than “baggage.” Undershorts is the American equivalent of British underpants

for men’s underwear, although the latter is perfectly understandable in America.

Panties is the American equivalent of British pants or knickers for women’s under-

wear, although the American term is known in England too.

There are many other hardy perennials on such lists. Mad is supposedly American

and angry British, though Americans use angry in formal contexts, often under the

impression that mad as a synonym is “incorrect,” and many speakers of British

English use mad in the sense ‘angry.’ It was frequently so used in older English

(for example, in the King James Bible of 1611, Acts 26: “being exceedingly mad against

them I persecuted them even unto strange cities,” compare the New English Bible’s “my

fury rose to such a pitch that I extended my persecution to foreign cities,” which does

not improve what did not need improvement in the first place). Mailbox is supposedly

American for British pillar-box, though the English know the former; they also use

letterbox for either of two things: a public receptacle for mailing (that is, “posting”)

letters or a slit in a door through which the postman delivers letters.

Package is supposedly American and parcel British, though the supposedly

British word is well known to all Americans, who have for a long time sent packages

by parcel post (not “package mail”). Sick is supposedly American and ill British,

though sick, reputed to mean only ‘nauseated’ in England, is frequently used in

the supposedly American (actually Old English) sense. Thus the actor Sir Ralph

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Richardson wrote, “I was often sick as a child, and so often lonely, and I remember

when I was in hospital a kindly visitor giving me a book,” in which only the phrase

“in hospital” instead of American “in the hospital” indicates the writer’s Britishness.

Stairway is supposedly American and staircase British, although stairs is the usual

term in both countries and stairway is recorded in British dictionaries with no nota-

tion that it is confined to American usage. Finally, window shade is supposedly

American and blind British, though blind(s) is the usual term throughout the eastern

United States. There are many other equally weak examples.

There are, however, many genuine instances of differences in word choice,

though most of them would not cause any serious confusion on either side.

Americans do not say coach for (interurban) bus, compère for M.C. (or emcee,

less frequently master of ceremonies) in a theatrical or television setting, first floor

(or storey [sic]) for second floor (or story) (a British first floor being immediately

above the ground floor, which is an American English synonym for first floor),

lorry for truck, mental for insane, petrol for gas(oline), pram (or the full form per-

ambulator) for baby carriage, or treacle for molasses. Nor do they call an intermis-

sion (between divisions of an entertainment) an interval, an orchestra seat a seat in

the stalls, a raise (in salary) a rise, or a trillion a billion (in British English a billion

being a million millions, whereas in American English it is what the British call a

milliard—a mere thousand millions—although the American use is becoming more

common in Britain). Many other words differ, but they are neither numerous nor

important in everyday speech.

American Infiltration of the British Word Stock

Because in the course of recent history Americans have acquired greater commer-

cial, technical, and political importance, it is perhaps natural that the British and

others should take a somewhat high-handed attitude toward American speech.

The fact is that the British have done so at least since 1735, when one Francis

Moore, describing for his countrymen the then infant city of Savannah, said, “It

stands upon the flat of a Hill; the Bank of the River (which they in barbarous

English call a bluff) is steep” (Mathews, Beginnings 13). H. L. Mencken treats the

subject of British attitudes toward American speech fully and with characteristic

zest in the first chapter of The American Language (1–48) and also in the first sup-

plement (1–100) to that work, which is wonderful, if misnamed, because there is no

essential difference between the English of America and that of Britain.

The truth is that British English has been extensively infiltrated by American usage,

especially vocabulary. The transfer began quite a while ago, long before films, radio,

and television were ever thought of, although they have certainly hastened the process.

Sir William Craigie, the editor of A Dictionary of American English on Historical

Principles, pointed out that although “for some two centuries . . . the passage of new

words or senses across the Atlantic was regularly westwards . . . with the nineteenth cen-

tury . . . the contrary current begins to set in, bearing with it many a piece of drift-wood

to the shores of Britain, there to be picked up and incorporated in the structure of the

language” (Study of American English 208). He cited such Americanisms in British

English as backwoods, beeline, belittle, blizzard, bunkum, caucus, cloudburst, prairie,

swamp, and a good many others that have long been completely acclimatized.

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In recent years many other Americanisms have been introduced into British usage:

cafeteria, cocktail, egghead, electrocute (both in reference to the mode of capital pun-

ishment and in the extended sense ‘to kill accidentally by electric shock’), fan ‘sports

devotee,’ filling station, highbrow, and lowbrow. American radio has superseded

British wireless, and TV has about crowded out the somewhat nurseryish telly. The

ubiquitous OK seems to occur more frequently nowadays in England than in the land

of its birth and may be found in quite formal situations, such as on legal documents to

indicate the correctness of details therein. These and other Americanisms have slithered

into British English in the most unobtrusive way, so that their American origin is

hardly regarded at all except by a few crusty older-generation speakers. Since they are

used by the English, they are “English,” and that is all there is to it.

The following Americanisms—forms, meanings, or combinations—appear in

the formal utterances of VIPs, as well as in the writings of some quite respectable

authors on both sides of the Atlantic: alibi ‘excuse,’ allergy ‘aversion’ (and allergic

‘averse’), angle ‘viewpoint,’ blurb ‘publicity statement,’ breakdown ‘analysis,’ crash

‘collide,’ know-how, maybe, sales resistance, to go back on, to slip up, to stand up

to, way of life. Fortnight ‘two consecutive weeks,’ a Briticism to most Americans, is

being replaced by American two weeks.

The convenient use of noun as verb in to contact, meaning ‘to get in touch

with,’ originated in America, though it might just as well have done so in England,

since there is nothing un-English about such a conversion: scores of other nouns

have undergone the same shift of use. The verb was first scorned in England, the

Spectator complaining in 1927, “Dreiser should not be allowed to corrupt his lan-

guage by writing ‘anything that Clyde had personally contacted here’.” But no one

gets disturbed over it nowadays. By the middle of the last century, it had become

clear that contact “carries high symbolic importance. . . . Mencken was wrong—

there will be no American language, for the simple reason that, apart from devia-

tions in ephemeral slang and regional dialects . . . the Queen’s English and the

President’s English grow together” (Crane Brinton, New York Herald-Tribune

Book Review, May 1, 1955, 3).

Actually, the two Englishes were never so far apart as American patriotism and

British insularity have painted them. National linguistic attitudes sometimes mani-

fest themselves in a prideful American “mucker pose” and an overweening British

assumption of superiority. “How snooty of the British to call a tux a dinner

jacket!” “How boorish of the Americans to call an egg whisk an egg beater!” The

most striking of such presumably amusing differences, however, are not very impor-

tant, being on a rather superficial level—in the specialized vocabularies of travel,

sports, schools, government, and various trades.

SYNTACTICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES

Syntactical and morphological differences are numerous but just as trivial as those

in word choice. With regard to collective nouns, for instance, the British are much

more likely than Americans to use a plural verb form, like “the public are. . . .”

Plural verbs are frequent with the names of sports teams, which, because they lack

the plural -s, would require singular verbs in American usage: “England Await

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Chance to Mop Up” (a headline, the reference being to England’s cricket team,

engaged in a test match with Australia) and “Wimbledon Are Fancied for Double”

(also a headline). This usage is not confined to sports pages: witness “The village

are livid”; “The U.S. Government are believed to favour . . .”; “Eton College break

up for the summer holidays to-day”; “The Savoy [Hotel] have their own water sup-

ply”; “The Government regard . . .”; and “Scotland Yard are. . . .”

The following locutions, all from British writings, might have been phrased as

indicated within square brackets by American writers. Yet as they stand they would

not at all puzzle an American reader, and the bracketed equivalents may be heard

in British:

Thus Mgr. Knox is faced by a word, which, if translated by its English equivalent,

will give a meaning possibly very different to [from, than] its sense.

When he found his body on Hampstead Heath, the only handkerchief was a clean

one which had certainly not got [did not have] any eucalyptus on it.

You don’t think . . . that he did confide in any person?—Unlikely. I think he would

have done [would have] if Galbraith alone had been involved.

I’ll tell it you [to you].

In the morning I was woken up [awakened] at eight by a housemaid.

There are many differences other than different to in the choice of prepositions:

for instance, the English householder lives in a street, the American on it; the

English traveler gets in or out of a train, the American on or off it; but such varia-

tions are of little consequence.

BRITISH AND AMERICAN PURISM

Perhaps because pronunciation is less important as a mark of social status in America

than in Britain, American attitudes put greater stress on grammatical “correctness,”

based on such matters as the supposed “proper” position of only and other shibbo-

leths. For some people it seems to be practically a moral obligation to follow “good”

grammar in choosing forms of personal pronouns and who strictly by what they

think is the proper case; eschewing can to ask for or give permission; shunning like

as a conjunction; referring to everybody, everyone, nobody, no one, somebody, and

someone with singular he or she; and observing the whole set of fairly simple gram-

matical rules that those who are secure have never given much thought to.

Counterexamples to these supposed rules of usage are easy enough to come by.

“Who are you with?” (that is, ‘What newspaper do you work for?’), asked Queen

Elizabeth II of various newspapermen at a reception given for her by the press in

Washington, DC. Though who for whom and a terminal preposition would not pass

muster among many grammarians, they are literally the Queen’s English. In the novel

The Cambridge Murders, a titled academic writes to a young acquaintance, “Babs

dear, can I see you for a few moments, please?” There is no indication that Babs

responded, “You can, but you may not,” as American children are sometimes told.

Like has been used as a conjunction in self-assured, cultivated English since the early

sixteenth century—as in a comment by an English critic, Clive Barnes: “These

Russians dance like the Italians sing and the Spaniards fight bulls.”

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The choice of case for pronouns is governed by principles quite different from

those found in the run of grammar books; Winston Churchill quoted King George

VI as observing that “it would not be right for either you or I to be where we

planned to be on D-Day,” and Somerset Maugham was primly sic’ed by an

American reviewer for writing “a good deal older than me.” The use of they,

them, and their with a singular antecedent has long been standard English; speci-

mens of this “solecism” are found in Jane Austen, Thomas De Quincey, Lord

Dunsany, Cardinal Newman, Samuel Butler, and others. The OED cites Lord

Chesterfield, who may be taken as a model of elegant eighteenth-century usage, as

having written, “If a person is born of a gloomy temper . . . they cannot help it.”

To be sure, purists abound in England, where the “rules” originated, just as

they do in America. They abound everywhere, for that matter, for the purist atti-

tude toward language is above all a question of temperament. Moreover, English

purists are about as ill-informed and inconsistent as their American counterparts.

Most purported “guides” to English usage, British or American, are expressions of

prejudice with little relationship to real use. Notable exceptions—reliable and thor-

ough reports of how disputed expressions are actually used as well as what people

have thought about them—are Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, by

E. Ward Gilman, and The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, by Pam Peters.

Dictionaries and the Facts

The most important and available sources for information about the facts of lan-

guage are dictionaries. Since 1800, the dictionary tradition, which had reached an

earlier acme in Dr. Samuel Johnson’s work, has progressed far beyond what was

possible for that good man. Today English speakers have available an impressive

array of dictionaries to suit a variety of needs.

The greatest of all English dictionaries, and indeed the greatest dictionary ever

made for any language, is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It was begun in

1857 as a project of the Philological Society of London for a “New English

Dictionary,” and that was what the work was called until the Oxford University

Press assumed responsibility for it. The principal editor of the dictionary was

James Murray, a Scotsman who enlisted his family to work on the dictionary.

Published in fascicles, it was completed in twelve volumes in 1928, thirteen years

after Murray’s death and seventy-one years after it had been proposed. But that

was not the end of it. In 1933 a supplementary volume was published, largely fill-

ing lacunae from the early volumes. Then, after a hiatus of forty years, Robert

Burchfield brought out four new supplementary volumes (1972–86) that both cor-

rected missing history and added new words that had come into the language since

the original publication. In 1989, a second edition of the dictionary was published

in twenty volumes, combining the original with Burchfield’s supplements and add-

ing yet more new material. In 1992, an electronic version of the second edition was

published on CD-ROM. The electronic files of the dictionary continue to be

updated and corrected and are available online, though only by subscription.

What distinguishes the Oxford English Dictionary is not merely its size, but the

fact that it aims to record every English word, present and past, and to give for

each a full historical treatment, tracing the word from its first appearance until the

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present day with all variations in form, meaning, and use. Furthermore, the dictio-

nary illustrates the history of each word with abundant quotations showing the

word in context throughout its history. Quotations are often the most informative

and useful part of a word’s treatment.

Nothing else like the OED has ever been done. But America’s greatest dictio-

nary is Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, edited by Philip Gove and

first published in 1961. It is quite a different work from the OED but is the prime

example of its own genre, an “unabridged” (that is, large and comprehensive) dictio-

nary of current use. Its publisher, the Merriam-Webster Company, carries on the

tradition of Noah Webster’s dictionaries of the early nineteenth century. Webster

had peculiar ideas about etymology, but he has been called a “born definer,” and

his dictionaries were the best of their time in America or England. Webster’s Third

has in it nothing whatever of old Noah’s work, but it carries on his practice of

innovation and high quality in lexicography. With its supplements of new words,

Webster’s Third remains the best record of the vocabulary of current English in its

American variety.

Many smaller dictionaries are excellent. Notable are Merriam-Webster’s

Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., and the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on

Historical Principles, 6th ed., both with CD-ROM versions.

NATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN PRONUNCIATION

For the pronunciation of individual words, much the same situation holds true as

for word choices: the differences are relatively inconsequential and frequently

shared. For instance, in either and neither an overwhelming majority of Americans

have [i] in the stressed syllable, though some—largely from the Atlantic coastal

cities—have [aɪ], which is also found elsewhere, doubtless because of its supposed

prestige. The [i] pronunciation also occurs in standard British English alongside its

usual [aɪ]. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate and the Shorter Oxford each give both

pronunciations without national identifications, although in reverse order.

British English has a pronunciation of each of the following words differing

from that usual in American English: ate [ɛt], been [bin], evolution [ivǝlušǝn], fragile

[fræǰaɪl], medicine [mɛdsɪn], nephew [nɛvyu], process [prosɛs], trait [tre], valet

[vælɪt], zenith [zɛnɪθ]. But the Shorter Oxford records the following “American”

pronunciations without a national label: ate [et], been [bɪn], evolution [ɛvǝlušǝn],

medicine [mɛdǝsǝn], nephew [nɛfyu], trait [tret], valet [væle]. The pronunciation

[ɛt] for ate occurs in American speech but is nonstandard. For nephew, [nɛvyu] is

current only in Eastern New England, Chesapeake Bay, and South Carolina. The

pronunciation [prosɛs] is used in high-toned American speech.

The prevalent American pronunciations of the following words do not occur in

standard British English: leisure [ližǝr], quinine [kwaɪnaɪn], squirrel [skwǝrǝl] (also

stirrup and syrup with the same stressed vowel), tomato [tǝmeto], vase [ves]. But

the prevalent British pronunciations of all of them exist, though indeed not widely,

in American English—that is, [lɛžǝ(r)], [kwɪnin], [skwɪrǝl], [tǝmɑto], [vɑz].

The British pronunciation of lieutenant as [lɛftɛnǝnt] when it refers to an army

officer is never heard in American English; [lutɛnǝnt] was recommended for

Americans by Noah Webster in his American Dictionary of the English Language

late modern english (1800–present)

191

(1828). Webster also recommended schedule with [sk-]. It is likely, however, that the

historical pronunciation with [s-] was the one most widely used in both England and

America in 1828. The usual British pronunciation is with [š-], although [sk-] occurs

there as well.

Other pronunciations that are nationally distinctive include (with the American

pronunciation given first) chagrin [šǝˈgrɪn] / [ˈšægrɪn], clerk [klǝrk] / [klɑk], corol-

lary [ˈkɔrǝˌlɛri] / [kǝˈrɒlǝrɪ], dynasty [ˈdaɪnǝsti] / [ˈdɪnǝstɪ], laboratory [ˈlæbrǝˌtori] /

[lǝˈbɒrǝt(ǝ)rɪ] or [ˈlæbrǝt(ǝ)rɪ], miscellany [ˈmɪsǝˌleni] / [mɪˈsɛlǝnɪ], premier [prǝˈmɪr] /

[ˈprɛmyǝ] or [ˈprimyǝ]. American carburetor [ˈkɑrbǝˌretǝr] and British carburettor

[ˌkɑbyʊˈrɛtǝ] are, in addition as well as to being pronounced differently, variant written

forms, as are the words aluminum (again, Noah Webster’s choice) and aluminium.

As for more sweeping differences, what strikes most American ears most

strongly is the modern standard British shift of an older [æ] (which survives in

American English except before r as in far, lm as in calm, and in father) to [ɑ] in a

number of very frequently used words like ask, path, and class. Up to the very end

of the eighteenth century, [ɑ] in such words was considered lower-class. This shift

cannot, however, be regarded as exclusively British, inasmuch as its effect is evident

in the speech of eastern New England. Present American usage in regard to such

words is not consistent: a Bostonian may, for instance, have [ɑ] (or an intermediate

[a]) in half (and then perhaps only some of the time), but not in can’t, or vice versa.

According to John S. Kenyon (183), “The pronunciation of ‘ask’ words with [a] or

[ɑ] has been a favorite field for schoolmastering and elocutionary quackery.”

Indeed, one hears American TV personalities pronounce [a] in words like hat,

happy, and dishpan hands that were not affected by the aforementioned shift.

The use of British or Bostonian [ɑ] in what Kenyon calls the ask words, sup-

posed by some naive American speakers to have higher social standing than the

normal American [æ], is fraught with danger. With speakers who use it naturally,

in the sense that they acquired it in childhood when learning to talk, it never occurs

in a great many words in which it might be expected by analogy. Thus, bass, crass,

lass, and mass have [æ], in contrast to the [ɑ] of class, glass, grass, and pass. But

classic, classical, classicism, classify, passage, passenger, and passive all have [æ].

Gastric has [æ], but plaster has [ɑ]; ample has [æ], but example and sample have

[ɑ]; fancy and romance have [æ], but chance, dance, and glance have [ɑ]; cant

‘hypocritical talk’ has [æ], but can’t ‘cannot’ has [ɑ]; mascot, massacre, and pastel

have [æ], but basket, master, and nasty have [ɑ]; and bastard, masquerade, and

mastiff may have either [æ] or [ɑ]. It is obvious that few status seekers could master

such complexities, even if there were any real point in doing so. There is none, actu-

ally, for no one worth fooling would be fooled by such a shallow display of linguis-

tic virtuosity.

Somewhat less noticeable, perhaps because it is more widespread in American

English than the use of [ɑ] or [a] in the ask words, is the standard British English

loss of [r] except when a vowel follows it. The American treatment of this sound

is, however, somewhat more complicated than the British. In parts of the deep

South, it may be lost even between vowels, as in Carolina and very. But in one

way or another, [r] is lost in eastern New England, in New York City, and in

most of the coastal South. Away from the Atlantic Coast, it is retained in most

positions.

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There are other less striking phonological differences, like the British slightly

rounded “short o” [ɒ] in contrast to the American unrounded [ɑ] in collar, got,

stop, and the like. Yet in western Pennsylvania and eastern New England, a vowel

like the British one can be heard in these words.

British English long ago lost its secondary stress on the penultimate syllables of

polysyllables in -ary, -ery, and -ory (for example, military, millinery, obligatory). This

subordinate stress is regularly retained in American English, as in mónastèry, sécretàry,

térritòry, and the like. The secondary stress may be lacking in American library

(sometimes reduced to disyllabic [ˈlaɪbri]), but it regularly occurs in other such words.

Intonational characteristics—risings and fallings in pitch—plus timbre of voice

distinguish British English from American English far more than pronunciations of

individual words. Voice quality in this connection has not been much investigated,

and most statements about it are impressionistic; but there can be little doubt of its

significance. Even if they were to learn British intonation, Americans (such as

Bostonians, whose treatment of r and of the vowel of ask, path, and the like agrees

with that of standard British English) would never in the world pass among the

British as English. They would still be spotted as “Yanks” by practically everyone

in the British Isles. Precision in the description of nationally characteristic voice

qualities must, however, be left for future investigators.

In regard to intonation, the differences are most noticeable in questions and

requests. Contrast the intonation patterns of the following sentences, very roughly

indicated as they would customarily be spoken in British and American English:

It is usually difficult or impossible to tell whether a singer is English or American

because the intonational patterns in singing are those of the composer.

BE: Where are you going to be?

AE: Where are you going to be?

BE: Are you sure?

AE: Are you sure?

BE: Let me know where you’re going to be.

AE: Let me know where you’re going to be.

It is most unlikely that tempo plays any part in the identification of accent, British or

American. To Americans unaccustomed to hearing it, British speech frequently seems

to be running on at a great rate. But this impression of speed is doubtless also expe-

rienced in regard to American English by those English people who have not come

into contact with American television shows, movies, and tourists, if there are any

such English. Some people speak slowly, some rapidly, regardless of nationality;

moreover, the same individuals are likely to speak more rapidly when they know

what they are talking about than when they must “make conversation.”

The type of American speech that one now hears most frequently on national

television, especially in commercials, eliminates regional or individual characteristics

late modern english (1800–present)

193

discernible to untrained ears. The extent of the influence and prestige of those who

speak the commercials may be gauged by the astronomical sums spent on such adver-

tising. Perhaps this form of speech, based to a large extent on writing, may in time

become a standardized nationwide dialect.

BRITISH AND AMERICAN SPELLING

Finally, there is the matter of spelling, which looms larger in the consciousness of

those who are concerned with national differences than it deserves to. Somewhat

exotic to American eyes are cheque (for drawing money from a bank), cyder,

cypher, gaol, kerb (of a street), pyjamas, and tyre (around a wheel). But check,

cider, cipher, jail, curb, pajamas, and tire also occur in England with varying

frequency.

Noah Webster, through the influence of his spelling book and dictionaries, was

responsible for Americans settling upon -or spellings for a group of words spelled in

his day with either -or or -our: armo(u)r, behavio(u)r, colo(u)r, favo(u)r, flavo(u)r,

harbo(u)r, labo(u)r, neighbo(u)r, and the like. All such words were current in earlier

British English without the u, though most Britons today are probably unaware of

that fact; Webster was making no radical change in English spelling habits.

Furthermore, the English had themselves struck the u from a great many words

earlier spelled -our, alternating with -or: author, doctor, emperor, error, governor,

horror, mirror, and senator, among others.

Webster is also responsible for the American practice of using -er instead of the

-re that the British came to favor in a number of words—for instance, calibre, cen-

tre, litre, manoeuvre, metre (of poetry or of the unit of length in the metric system),

sepulchre, and theatre. The last of these spellings competes with theater in America,

especially in proper names. It is regarded by many of its users as an elegant

(because British) spelling and by others as an affectation. Except for litre, which

did not come into English until the nineteenth century, all these words occurred in

earlier British English with -er.

The American use of -se in defense, offense, and pretense, in which the English

usually have -ce, is also attributable to the precept and practice of Webster, though

he did not recommend fense for fence, which is simply an aphetic form of defense

(or defence). Spellings with -se occurred in earlier English for all these words,

including fence. Suspense is now standard in British English, though suspence

occurred earlier.

Webster proposed dropping final k in such words as almanack, musick, phy-

sick, publick, and traffick, bringing about a change that occurred independently in

British English as well. His proposed burdoc, cassoc, and hassoc now regularly end

in k, whereas havock, in which he neglected to drop the k, is everywhere spelled

without it.

Though he was not the first to recommend it, Webster is doubtless to be cred-

ited with the American practice of not doubling final l when adding a suffix except

in words stressed on their final syllables—for example, gróvel, groveled, groveler,

groveling, but propél, propelled, propeller, propelling, propellant. Modern British

spelling usually doubles l before a suffix regardless of the position of the stress, as

in grovelled, groveller, and so forth.

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The British use of ae and oe looks strange to Americans in anaemic, gynaecology,

haemorrhage, paediatrician, and in diarrhoea, homoeopathy, manoeuvre, and oesopha-

gus, but a bit less so in aesthetic, archaeology, and encyclopaedia, which are occasional in

American usage. Some words earlier written with one or the other of these digraphs long

ago underwent simplification—for example, phaenomenon, oeconomy, and poenology.

Others are in the process of simplification: hemorrhage, hemorrhoids, and medieval are

frequent British variants of the forms with ae.

Most British writers use -ise for the verbal suffix written -ize in America in such

words as baptize, organize, and sympathize. However, the Times of London, the

OED, the various editions of Daniel Jones’s English Pronouncing Dictionary, and

a number of other publications of considerable intellectual prestige prefer the spell-

ing with z, which, in the words of the OED, is “at once etymological and

phonetic.” (The suffix is ultimately from Greek -izein.) The ct of connection and

inflection is due to the influence of connect and inflect. The etymologically sounder

spellings connexion and inflexion, from Latin connexiōn(em) and inflexiōn(em),

were once favored spellings in England, but are now rarer even there.

Spelling reform has been a recurring preoccupation of would-be language engi-

neers on both sides of the Atlantic. Webster, who loved tinkering with all aspects of

language, had contemplated far flashier spelling reforms than the simplifications he

succeeded in getting adopted. For instance, he advocated lopping off the final e of

-ine, -ite, and -ive in final syllables (thus medicin, definit, fugitiv); using oo for ou in

group and soup; writing tung for tongue; and deleting the a in bread, feather, and

the like. But in time he abandoned these unsuccessful, albeit sensible, spellings.

Those of Webster’s spellings that were generally adopted were choices among exist-

ing options, not his inventions. The financier Andrew Carnegie and President

Theodore Roosevelt both supported a reformed spelling in the early years of the

twentieth century, including such simplifications as catalog for catalogue, claspt

for clasped, gage for gauge, program for programme, and thoro for thorough.

Some of the spellings they advocated have been generally adopted, some are still

used as variants, but many are now rare.

VARIATION WITHIN NATIONAL VARIETIES

Despite the comparative uniformity of standard English throughout the world, there

clearly are variations within the language, even within a single national variety, such

as American English.

Kinds of Variation

The kind of English we use depends on both us and the circumstances in which we

use it. The variations that depend on us have to do with where we learned our

English (regional or geographical dialects), what cultural groups we belong to (ethnic

or social dialects), and a host of other factors such as our sex, age, and education.

The variations that depend on the circumstances of use have to do with whether we

are talking or writing, how formal the situation is, the subject of the discourse, the

effect we want to achieve, and so on. Differences in language that depend on who

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we are constitute dialect. Differences that depend on where, why, or how we are

using language are matters of register.

Each of us speaks a variety of dialects; for example, a Minnesota, Swedish-

American, male, younger-generation, grade-school-educated person talks differently

from a Tennessee, Appalachian, female, older generation, college-educated person—

each of those factors (place, ethnic group, sex, age, and education) defines a dialect.

We can change our dialects during the course of our lives (an Ohioan who moves to

Alabama may start saying y’all and dropping r’s), but once we have reached matu-

rity, our dialects tend to be fairly well set and to vary only slightly, unless we are

very impressionable or very strong influences lead us to change.

Each of us also uses a variety of registers, and we change them often, shifting from

one to another as the situation warrants, and often learning new ones. The more var-

ied our experiences have been, the more various registers we are likely to command.

But almost everyone uses more than one register of language in daily activities like

talking with young children, answering the telephone when a friend calls, meeting a

new colleague, and saying good night to one’s family. The language differences in

such circumstances may not be obvious to us, because we are used to them and tend

to overlook the familiar, but a close study will show them to be considerable.

One variety of language—in fact, the variety that has been almost the exclusive

concern of this book—is standard English. A standard language is one that is used

widely—in many places and for many purposes; it is also one that enjoys high pres-

tige—one that people regard as “good” language; and it is described in dictionaries

and grammar books and is taught in schools. Standard English is the written form

of our language used in books and periodicals and is therefore also called edited

English. It is, to be sure, not a homogeneous thing: there is plenty of what Gerard

Manley Hopkins called “pied beauty” in it, more in fact than many persons realize.

Its variety is part of the reason it is useful. Standard English is standard, not

because it is intrinsically better than other varieties—clearer or more logical or pret-

tier—but only because English speakers have agreed to use it in so many places for

so many purposes that they have therefore made a useful tool of it and have come

to regard it as a good thing.

Regional Dialects

In contrast to standard English are all the regional and ethnic dialects of the United

States and of other English-speaking countries. In America, there are three or four

main regional dialects in the eastern part of the country: Northern (from northern New

Jersey and Pennsylvania to New England), North Midland (from northern Delaware,

Maryland, and West Virginia through southern New Jersey and Pennsylvania), South

Midland, also called Inland Southern (the Appalachian region from southern West

Virginia to northern Georgia), and Southern, or Coastal Southern (from southern

Delaware and Maryland down to Florida, along the Atlantic seaboard).

The farther west one goes, the more difficult it is to recognize clearly defined

dialect boundaries. The fading out of sharp dialect lines in the western United

States results from the history of the country. The earliest English-speaking settle-

ments were along the eastern seaboard; and because that area has been longest

populated, it has had the most opportunity to develop distinct regional forms of

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speech. The western settlements are generally more recent and were usually made by

persons of diverse origins. Thus the older eastern dialect differences were not kept

intact by the western pioneers, and new ones have not had the opportunity to

develop. Because of the increased mobility of the population and the greater oppor-

tunities for hearing and talking with persons from many areas, distinct new western

dialects are slow in coming into existence.

The scholarly study of American dialects began in 1889 with the foundation of

the American Dialect Society. The chief purpose of the society was the production

of an American dialect dictionary, though that book was a long time in coming.

Frederic G. Cassidy eventually fathered it; and the Dictionary of American

Regional English (DARE), as it is now known, is being published by the Belknap

Press of Harvard under the continuing editorship of Joan Houston Hall. It is the

most thorough and authoritative source for information about all varieties of non-

standard English in America.

In 1925 the first issue of American Speech appeared. It is a magazine founded

by three academics—Kemp Malone, Louise Pound, and Arthur G. Kennedy—to

present information about English in America in a form appealing to general read-

ers. The journalist-critic H. L. Mencken inspired it and was also responsible for

some of the liveliest writing ever published on American English in his monumental

three-volume study, The American Language. In 1970 American Speech became the

journal of the American Dialect Society.

Another project to assess the regional forms of American English is the Linguistic

Atlas of the United States and Canada, which originally was intended to cover all of

English-speaking North America but later was divided into a series of regional pro-

jects, of which three were published: the Linguistic Atlas of New England, edited by

Hans Kurath; The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest, edited by Harold B. Allen;

and the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, edited by Lee Pederson.

An engaging and informative presentation on American dialect diversity is a

program originally broadcast on television but available as a video, entitled

American Tongues. Produced by the Center for New American Media, with the

advice of some of the leading dialect authorities of the day, the film presents the

human side of regional and social dialects—the comedy, the angst, and the pride

that can come from “talkin’ different.” It gives an accurate and honest portrayal

of how Americans talk and of what they think about the way they themselves and

others use the English language.

Ethnic and Social Dialects

The concentrated study of ethnic and social dialects is more recent than that of

regional ones but has been vigorously pursued. American English includes a very

large number of ethnic dialects. Spanish-influenced dialects include those of

New York City (Puerto Rican), Florida (Cuban), and Texas and California (different

varieties of Mexican). Pennsylvania Dutch is actually a variety of High German

brought to American by early settlers and here mixed with English. Jewish dialect,

derived from Yiddish, is important in New York, but has had pervasive influence

on informal speech throughout the country. Scandinavian, especially Swedish, immi-

grants to Wisconsin created a distinctive ethnic dialect there. Louisiana has Cajun

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197

dialect, so called because the French-speaking settlers came from Acadie (or Acadia),

their name for Nova Scotia. The Appalachian region has a distinctive dialect derived

in part from its early Scotch-Irish settlers. The United States has had settlers from all

over the world, and wherever communities of immigrants have settled, an ethnic dia-

lect has sprung up.

The language of African Americans, one of the most prominent ethnic groups

in the United States, has been studied especially from the standpoint of its relation-

ship to the standard language. Two questions are involved, according to Ralph

Fasold: (1) How different are the speechways of present-day blacks and whites?

(2) What was the origin of African-American or Black English, that is, the typical

language of African-Americans, especially as it differs from that of their neighbors?

The extent of the present-day linguistic differences between blacks and whites

has often been exaggerated. The distinctive African-American vocabulary exerts a

steady and enriching influence on the language of other Americans; for example,

nitty-gritty came from black use, as did jazz earlier, and yam much earlier.

Pronunciation differences are notable; for example, the typical African-American

pronunciation of aunt as [ɑnt] is unusual for most other Americans (although it is

the standard British way of saying the word). Blacks are also more likely than

whites to drop the [t] from words like rest and soft; to use an r-less pronunciation

of words like bird, four, and father; and to pronounce words like with and nothing

with [f] rather than [θ]. Differences in grammar include consuetudinal be (unin-

flected be to denote habitual or regular action, as in “She be here every day”) and

the omission of be in other uses (as in “She here now”) as well as of the -s ending of

verbs (as in “He hear you”). Most differences—whether of vocabulary, pronuncia-

tion, or grammar—tend, however, to be matters of degree rather than of kind. The

differences between black and white speech are seldom of such magnitude as to

impede communication.

The origin of African-American English has been attributed to two sources.

One is that blacks may have first acquired their English from the whites among

whom they worked on the plantations of the New World, and therefore their pres-

ent English reflects the kind of English their ancestors learned several hundred years

ago, modified by generations of segregation. Another is that blacks, who originally

spoke a number of different African languages, may have first learned a kind of

pidgin—a mixed and limited language used for communication between those with-

out a common tongue—perhaps based on Portuguese, African languages, and

English. Because they had no other common language, the pidgin was creolized,

that is, became the native and full language of the plantation slaves and eventually

was assimilated to the English spoken around them, so that today there are few of

the original creole features still remaining.

The difference between the two historical explanations is chiefly in how they

explain the divergent features between black and white speech. In the first explana-

tion, those differences are supposed to be African features introduced by blacks into

the English they learned from whites or else they are survivals of archaic features

otherwise lost from the speech of whites. In the second explanation, they are sup-

posed to be the remnants of the original creole, which over the years has been

transformed gradually, by massive borrowing from English, into a type of language

much closer to standard English than it originally was. The historical reality was

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certainly more complex than either view alone depicts, but both explanations

doubtless have some truth in them. The passion with which one or the other view

is often held may reflect emotional attitudes more than linguistic facts.

Stylistic Variation

Style in language is the choice we make from the options available to us, chiefly

those of register. Stylistic variation is the major concern of those who write about

language in the popular press, although such writers may have little knowledge of

the subject. A widespread suspicion among the laity that our language is somehow

deteriorating becomes the opportunity for journalistic and other hucksters to peddle

their nostrums. The usage huckster plays upon the insecurity and apprehensions of

readers. (“Will America be the death of English?” ominously asked one guru.) Such

linguistic alarmism does no good, other than making a buck for the alarmist, but it

also does little harm; it is generally ineffectual. The best-informed and most sensible

treatment of good English is Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage,

already mentioned.

One stylistic variety that is of perennial interest is slang, primarily because it

continually renews itself. Slang is a deliberately undignified form of speech whose

use implies that the user is “in,” with special knowledge about the subject of the

slang term; it may be language (such as a sexual or scatological taboo term) signal-

ing that the speaker is not part of the establishment, or it may be protective lan-

guage that disguises unpleasant reality (such as waste for ‘kill’) or saves the user

from fuller explanation (such as dig you for ‘like, love, desire, sympathize with

you’). No single term will have all of these characteristics, but all slang shares sev-

eral of them (Dumas and Lighter). Because of its changeability, slang is hard to

study; by far the best treatment is the incomplete dictionary of slang on historical

principles by Jonathan Lighter.

Variation within British English

The British Isles had dialects from Anglo-Saxon times onward, and there has been a

clear historical continuity in them. Present-day dialect variation derives in the first

place from the Old English dialects as they developed in Middle English. Those dia-

lects were affected by historical events, such as the Viking influence in the Northern

and East Midland areas and the growth of London as the metropolitan center of

England, which brought influences from many dialects together.

Geographical dialects are not divided from one another by clear boundaries,

but rather phase gradually into one another. However, Peter Trudgill (Dialects of

England) has divided present-day England into a number of dialect areas on

the basis of seven features of pronunciation: but as [bǝt] or [bʊt], arm as [ɑrm] or

[ɑ:m], singer as [sɪŋǝ(r)] or [sɪŋgǝ(r)], few as [fyu] or [fu], seedy as [sidi] or [sidɪ], gate as [get] or [geit], and milk as [mɪlk] or [miʊk]. The sixteen dialect areas he identifies

are combined into six major ones, still corresponding at least roughly to the Middle

English dialects, respectively: Southwest, East (including the Home Counties around

London, Kent, East Anglia, and a southern part of the old East Midland), West

Central, East Central, Lower North, and Northeast (Northumberland, Tyneside,

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199

and Durham). Trudgill concludes his study with a double glance backward and

ahead (128):

The different forms taken by the English language in modern England represent the

results of 1500 years of linguistic and cultural development. It is in the nature of

language, and in the nature of society, that these dialects will always be changing. . . .

But unless we can rid ourselves of the idea that speaking anything other than

Standard English is a sign of ignorance and lack of “sophistication”, much of what

linguistic richness and diversity remains in the English language in this country may

be lost.

WORLD ENGLISH

Although American and British are the two major national varieties of the lan-

guage, with the largest numbers of speakers and the greatest impact worldwide,

there are many other varieties of English used around the globe. Today English is

used as a first language (a speaker’s native and often only language), as a second

language (in addition to a native language, but used regularly for important mat-

ters), and as a foreign language (used for special purposes, with various degrees of

fluency and frequency). Other important first-language varieties of English are those

of Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa.

English is extremely important as a second language in India and has official or

semi-official use in the Philippines, Malaysia, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Liberia,

and other countries in Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and elsewhere. It is the

international language of the airlines, of the sea and shipping, of computer technol-

ogy, of science, and indeed of communication generally. When a Japanese business

firm deals with a client in Saudi Arabia, their language of communication is likely

to be English.

Chinese has far more native speakers than any other language, and Spanish and

Hindi are competitors of English for second place. But English has more nonnative

speakers than any other language, is more widely disbursed around the world, and

is used for more purposes than any other language. The extraordinary spread of

English is not due to any inherent virtue, but rather to the fact that by historical

chance it has become the most useful language for others to learn.

In the course of its spread, English has diversified by adapting to local circum-

stances and cultures, so there are different varieties of English in every country.

However, because the heart of its usefulness is its ability to serve as an international

medium of communication, English is likely to retain a more or less homogeneous

core—an international standard based on the usage of the United States and the

United Kingdom. Yet each national variety has its own character and contribution

to make to world English. Here we look briefly at two quite different varieties, Irish

English and Indian English.

Irish English

Irish English is an old national variety with close links to both Britain and America.

It has had an influence far greater than its number of speakers or the political and

economic power of Ireland. Because large numbers of Irish men and women

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emigrated or were transported to the British colonies and America, their speech has

left its imprint on other varieties of English around the world. The influence of Irish

English on that of Newfoundland and the Caribbean, for example, is clear. In addi-

tion, many of the common features of Australian and American English may be due

to a shared influence from Ireland.

Irish influence began early. Irish scribes created the model for Anglo-Saxon

writing habits, as mentioned in Chapter 3. Irish authors have been part of the main-

stream of English literature since the eighteenth century: Jonathan Swift, Oliver

Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke, and Maria Edgeworth

from the earlier part of that period, and from the twentieth century: William

Butler Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, John Millington Synge, James Joyce, Sean

O’Casey, and Samuel Beckett.

Present-day Irish English is the historical development of seventeenth-century

British and Scottish English. English had been introduced to the western isle some

five hundred years earlier (about 1170), when King Henry II decided to add Ireland

to his domain. The twelfth-century settlers from England were Normans with

Welsh and English followers. Through the thirteenth century, the Middle Irish

English of those settlers spread in Ireland, after which it began to decline in use.

The Normans were linguistically adaptable, having been Scandinavians who

learned French in Normandy and English in Britain. When they moved to Ireland,

they began to learn Gaelic and to assimilate to the local culture. As a result, by the

early sixteenth century, Middle Irish English was dying out, being still spoken in

only a few areas of the English “Pale” (literally, a palisaded enclosure), the territory

controlled by the English.

Because of its declining control over Ireland, the English government began a

series of “plantations,” that is, colonizations of the island. The first of these were dur-

ing the reign of Mary Tudor, but they continued under her successors, with English

people settling in Ireland and Scots migrating to Ulster in the north. By the middle of

the seventeenth century, under the Puritan Commonwealth, English control over

Ireland and the position of the English language in the country were both firm.

The Modern Irish English of the Tudor and later “planters,” or settlers, was

not a development of Middle Irish English, but a new importation. It continued to

expand so that by the late nineteenth century Ireland had become predominantly an

English-speaking country, with Gaelic spoken mainly in western rural areas. The

independence of most of Ireland, with the establishment of the Irish Free State in

1922, has intensified the patriotic promotion of revived Gaelic (also called Erse) in

the south, but its use is more symbolic than practical.

Toward the northeast of the island, Irish English blends into the variety of

Scots brought across the sea by settlers from the Scottish lowlands, who outnum-

bered English settlers in that area by six to one. Consequently, in parts of the north-

ern counties of Donegal, Derry, Antrim, and Down, the language popularly used is

Ulster Scots, a variety of southern Scots, rather than Irish English.

Among the distinctive characteristics of Irish English is the old-fashioned

pronunciation of words like tea, meat, easy, cheat, steal, and Jesus with the vowel

[e] as in say and mate (a pronunciation noted in Chapter 7, 145–6). Stress falls later

in some words than is usual elsewhere: afflúence and architécture, for example.

Keen ‘lament for the dead’ is a characteristic Irish word widely known outside

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201

Ireland, and the use of evening for the time after noon is a meaning shared with

dialects in England (from which it was doubtless derived) and with Australia and

the Southern United States (whither it doubtless came with Irish immigrants). Poor

mouth ‘pretense of being very poor’ is another expression imported from Ireland

into the American South.

Especially characteristic of Irish are such grammatical constructions as the use of

do and be to indicate a habitual action (as in “He does work,” “He bees working,”

and “He does be working”) as opposed to an action at a moment in time (as in “He is

working”); that construction may have been an influence on African-American English.

Also, Irish English avoids the perfect tense, using after to signal a just-completed action:

“She is after talking with him,” that is, “She has just talked with him.”

Other Irishisms of grammar include the “cleft” construction: “It is a long time

that I am waiting” for “I have been waiting for a long time”; rhetorical questions:

“Whenever I listened, didn’t I hear the sound of him sleeping”; and the conjunction

and used before participles as a subordinator with the sense ‘when, as, while’: “He

was after waking up, and she pounding on the door with all her might.”

Indian English

English, although a relative latecomer to India, is one of the subcontinent’s most

important languages. It is, after Hindi, the second most widely spoken language in

India. Because India includes so many different languages, many incomprehensible

to other speakers in the country, an interlanguage is needed. Efforts to promote

Hindi as the sole national language have met strong resistance, especially in the

south, where the native languages are non-Indo-European and local pride resists

northern Hindi but accepts foreign English.

The entry of English into India can be traced to as early as the end of the year

1600, when Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to the East India Company of

London merchants for a monopoly of trade in the Orient. Missionaries and mis-

sionary schools followed the merchants. In the nineteenth century, the British Raj

(or government in India) was formed and promoted English instruction throughout

the land. For young Indians to make their way in life, they needed to assimilate to

English culture, particularly the language, and so an Indian dialect of English came

into existence.

The pronunciation of Indian English is greatly influenced by local languages

and thus varies in different parts of the country. For example, [t], [d], and [n] may

have a retroflex articulation, with the tongue curled back touching the roof of the

mouth. Initial [sk-], [sl-], and [sp-] do not occur in Hindi, so Indian English has

[ɪskul] for school, [ɪslip] for sleep, and [ɪspič] for speech. The sounds [w] and [v]

may not be distinguished phonemically, so wet and vet are pronounced alike.

In some Indian languages, aspirated and unaspirated stops, such as [t] and [th] are

different phonemes, and voiced stops such as [bh] and [dh] may be aspirated. The

vowels [e] of fate and [o] of boat are often articulated as pure long vowels [e:] and

[o:], rather than the phonetic diphthongs [ɛɪ] and [ǝʊ] of other varieties of English.

Also, Indian English may be syllable-timed rather than stress-timed like British and

American. Stress-timing pronounces strongly stressed syllables with about equal

intervals between them, so hurries over intervening unstressed syllables, something

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like “aTIME – toSLEEP – andbeQUIet,” creating a syncopated effect. Syllable

timing gives approximately the same intervals between all syllables regardless of

their stress, something like “a – time – to – sleep – and – be – qui – et,” creating a

staccato effect.

Grammatically, native Indian languages also affect Indian English. Questions

may be formed without inversion of the subject and verb: “Why you are saying

that?” An invariable tag question is used: “We are meeting tomorrow, isn’t it?”

Progressive forms are used for stative verbs: “He is knowing English well.”

The most numerous differences are probably in vocabulary. Many native

Indian words are imported into Indian English, of which the following are a very

small sample, emphasizing some that have entered wider English use: amah

‘nurse,’ babu ‘Indian gentleman,’ baksheesh ‘gratuity, tip,’ banyan ‘fig tree,’

bhang ‘marijuana,’ chit ‘note,’ crore ‘ten million,’ dhoti ‘loin cloth,’ dinghy ‘small

boat,’ ghee ‘clarified butter,’ kedgeree ‘a dish of rice and other ingredients,’ kulfi ‘a

type of ice cream,’ masala ‘a blend of spices,’ memsahib ‘European lady,’ nabob

‘person of wealth or prominence,’ nautch ‘professional dancing entertainment,’

pachisi ‘a board and dice game,’ pishpash ‘rice soup,’ rooty ‘bread,’ sepoy ‘police-

man, soldier,’ shalwar ‘baggy trousers,’ shampoo ‘massage,’ swaraj ‘home rule,’

tabla ‘pair of hand drums,’ tandur ‘earthen oven,’ vina ‘a musical stringed instru-

ment,’ and walla ‘person connected with a particular occupation.’

THE ESSENTIAL ONENESS OF ALL ENGLISH

We have now come to an end of our comparative survey of the present state of

English. Clearly, much more remains unreported. What should have emerged from

this brief treatment is a conception of both the essential unity and the engaging

variety of the English language in all its national, regional, social, and stylistic man-

ifestations. What, then, it may be asked, is the English language? Is it the speech of

London, of Boston, of New York, of Atlanta, of Melbourne, of Montreal, of

Calcutta? Is it the English of the metropolitan daily newspaper, of the bureaucratic

memo, of the contemporary poet, of religious ritual, of football sportscasts, of polit-

ical harangues, of loving whispers? A possible answer might be, none of these, but

rather the sum of them all, along with all other mergers and developments that have

taken place wherever what is thought of as the English language is spoken by those

who have learned it as their mother tongue or as an additional language. However,

the most influential form of English is the standard one written by British and

American authors—and it should be obvious by now that the importance of that

form is due not to any inherent virtues it may possess, but wholly to its usefulness

to people around the world, whatever their native language.

FOR FURTHER READING

Historical Background

Black. A History of the British Isles.

_______. A New History of England.

Morgan. The Oxford History of Britain.

late modern english (1800–present)

203

Overviews

Algeo. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 6: English in

North America.

Bailey. Nineteenth-Century English.

Bauer. Watching English Change.

Burchfield. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 5: English in

Britain and Overseas.

Görlach. English in Nineteenth-Century England.

Gramley and Pätzold. A Survey of Modern English.

Phillipps. Language and Class in Victorian England.

Romaine. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 4: 1776–1997.

Romaine. Language in Society.

American and British English

Algeo. British or American English?

Hargraves. Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions.

Schur. British English A to Zed.

American English

Bonfiglio. Race and the Rise of Standard American.

Kövecses. American English.

Mencken. The American Language.

Read. America—Naming the Country and Its People.

. Milestones in the History of English in America.

Tottie. An Introduction to American English.

American Dialects

Allen. The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest.

Butters. The Death of Black English.

Carver. American Regional Dialects.

Cassidy and Hall. Dictionary of American Regional English.

Green. African American English.

Kurath. Linguistic Atlas of New England.

Metcalf. How We Talk.

Mufwene. African-American English.

Pederson. Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States.

Wolfram and Schilling-Estes. American English: Dialects and Variation.

British Dialects

Trudgill. The Dialects of England.

Upton, Parry, and Widdowson. Survey of English Dialects.

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Upton and Widdowson. An Atlas of English Dialects.

Wales. Northern English.

Contemporary Dictionaries

Green. Chasing the Sun.

Landau. Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography.

Morton. The Story of “Webster’s Third.”

Murray. Caught in the Web of Words.

Contemporary Grammars

Greenbaum. The Oxford English Grammar.

Quirk et al. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language.

National Varieties

Allsopp. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage.

Avis. A Dictionary of Canadianisms.

Avis et al. Gage Canadian Dictionary.

Baker. Australian Language.

Baumgardner. South Asian English.

Bell and Kuiper. New Zealand English.

Branford. Dictionary of South African English.

Burchfield. New Zealand Pocket Oxford Dictionary.

Cassidy. Jamaica Talk.

Cassidy and Le Page. Dictionary of Jamaican English.

Chambers. Canadian English.

Dictionary of South African English.

Gordon et al. New Zealand English.

Hawkins. Common Indian Words in English.

Hickey. Irish English.

Holm. Dictionary of Bahamian English.

O Muirithe. English Language in Ireland.

Orsman. Dictionary of New Zealand English.

Ramson. Australian National Dictionary.

Roberts. West Indians & Their Language.

Romaine. Language in Australia.

Story, Kirwin, and Widdowson. Dictionary of New Foundland English.

Turner. English Language in Australia and New Zealand.

late modern english (1800–present)

205

World Englishes

Bailey and Görlach. English as a World Language.

Bauer. An Introduction to International Varieties of English.

Cheshire. English around the World.

Jenkins. World Englishes.

Kirkpatrick. World Englishes.

Todd and Hancock. International English Usage.

Trudgill and Hannah. International English.

±±±±±±±±±±

10 Words and

C H A P T E R

±±±±±±± Meanings

A word is the basic stuff of language. Sounds and letters are the way words are

expressed, and grammar is the way words are arranged. Thus language is centrally

words. Linguists tend to prefer the study of sounds (phonology) and grammar

(morphosyntax) over words (lexis) because those first two have comparatively strict

regularities that can be described as more or less fixed “laws” or “rules.” And lin-

guists love laws. Y

et language regularity is fuzzy, variable, and only imperfectly pre-

dictable, unlike good human laws and all natural laws. So the lack of strictness in

our vocabulary is not an aberration but is really typical of language.

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure famously compared the rules of lan-

guage to those of chess. But the American linguist Charles Hockett responded that

they are more like the rules of sandlot baseball—they are whatever one player can

persuade other players to accept, so they are uncertain and constantly changing.

Hockett was right. Language is the usage of people who speak the language. The

“rules” of language are descriptions of what people tend to do; they are not pre-

scriptions from outside the language that people have to follow.

English has an extraordinarily large vocabulary, much larger than that of many

other languages, because of its extensive contacts with other languages, because of

the large numbers of people all over the world who have come to use it, and

because of the increasingly manifold purposes for which it is used. It is hardly sur-

prising that the large English vocabulary includes words most of us have little occa-

sion to use and may not recognize at all. Y

ou have undoubtedly encountered some

such words already in the course of reading this book. But here are a few others

that are unfamiliar to many speakers of English: aglet, blatherskite, crepuscule,

dottle, eidolon, felly, gudgeon, hajji, incunabulum, jerrican, kyphotic, latitudinar-

ian, maculate, navicular, osculate, pyx, quidnunc, recuse, swarf, toque, usufruct,

vexillology, warison, Xanthippe, yashmak, zori. If you know at least seven of

those words (all of which are in a good desk dictionary), you are an eruditionally

nonpareil polymath. If you know half of them, you should have written this book

instead of its author.

Moreover, the English word stock is constantly growing. A New York Times

article by Grant Barrett recorded his list of words of 2

0

7

, many of which were

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older but were prominent during that year. They included astronaut diaper ‘a

garment worn by pressure-suited astronauts’; bacn ‘spamlike e-mail messages that

the receiver has chosen to receive (alerts, newsletters, automated reminders, etc.)’;

boot camp flu ‘a virus among military recruits, who live in close quarters under

stressful conditions’; colony collapse disorder ‘a disease killing pollinating bees

nationwide, so threatening agriculture’; earmarxist ‘a member of Congress who

adds earmarks—money designated for pet projects—to legislation’; exploding ARM

‘an adjustable rate mortgage whose rates rise beyond a borrower’s ability to pay’;

forever stamp ‘a postage stamp for first-class mail regardless of future price

increases’; global weirding ‘freakish weather and animal migration patterns attributed

to global warming’; gorno (from gore þ porno) ‘a genre of movies’; to life-stream ‘to

record one’s life in video, sound, pictures, and print’; maternal profiling ‘employment

discrimination against a woman who has, or will have, children’; mobisode ‘a short

version of a full-length television show or movie for playing on a mobile phone or

other hand-held electronic device’; Ninja loan (from No Income, No Job or Assets) ‘a

poorly documented loan made to a high-risk borrower’; to pap ‘to take paparazzi-

style photographs’; -shed (from watershed), as in foodshed ‘the area sufficient to pro-

vide food for a given location,’ viewshed ‘the landscape or topography visible from

a given geographic point,’ and walkshed ‘the area conveniently reached on foot from a

given geographic point’; and tumblelog ‘a Web site or blog that is a collection of brief

links to, quotes from, or comments about other Web sites.’ Few, if any, of these will

long survive, but all are illustrative of the creativity of wordsmiths.

Many people find the study of words and their meanings interesting and color-

ful. Witness the many letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines—letters

devoted to the uses and misuses of words, but usually misinformed. The misinfor-

mation is sometimes etymological in nature, like the old and oft-recurring wheeze

that sirloin is so called because King Henry VIII (or James I or Charles II) liked a

loin of beef so well that he knighted one, saying “Arise, Sir Loin” at the conferring

of the accolade. In reality, the term comes from French sur- ‘over, above’ and loin

and is thus a cut of meat from the top of the loin. It is likely, however, that the pop-

ular explanation of the knighting has influenced the modern spelling of the word.

Such fanciful tales appeal to our imagination and therefore are difficult to exor-

cise. The real history of words, however, is interesting enough to make unnecessary

such fictions as that about the knighting of the steak. When the speakers of a lan-

guage have need for a new word, they can make one up, borrow one from some

other language, or adapt one of the words they already use by changing its mean-

ing. The first two techniques for increasing the vocabulary will be the subjects of the

next two chapters; the third will occupy our attention for the remainder of this one.

SEMANTICS AND CHANGE OF MEANING

The meaning of a word is what those who use it intend or understand that it repre-

sents. Semantics is the study of meaning in all of its aspects. The Whorf hypothesis,

which was mentioned in Chapter 1, proposes that the way our language formulates

meaning affects the way we respond to the world or even perceive it. On an ordi-

nary level, language clearly influences our daily activities and habits of thought.

Because two persons can be referred to by the same word—for example, Irish—we

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assume that they must be alike in certain stereotyped ways. Thus we may uncon-

sciously believe that all the Irish have red hair, drink too much, and are quarrel-

some. General Semantics, a study founded by Alfred Korzybski, is an effort to pay

attention to such traps that language sets for us (Hayakawa and Hayakawa). Our

concern in this chapter, however, is not with such studies, but rather with the ways

in which the meanings of words change over time to allow us to talk about new

things or about old things in a new light.

Variable and Vague Meanings

The meanings of words vary with place, time, and situation. Thus the noun tonic

may mean ‘soft drink made with carbonated water’ in parts of eastern New

England, though elsewhere it usually means ‘liquid medicinal preparation to invigo-

rate the system’ or, in the phrase gin and tonic, ‘quinine water.’ In the usage of

musicians the same word may also mean the first tone of a musical scale. And

some linguists use it to mean the syllable of maximum prominence in an intona-

tional phrase.

A large number of educated speakers and writers, for whatever reason, object

to disinterested in the sense ‘uninterested, unconcerned’—a sense it previously had

but lost for a while—and want the word to have only the meaning ‘impartial,

unprejudiced.’ The criticized use has nevertheless gained such ground that it has

practically driven out the other one. That change causes no harm to language as

communication. We have merely lost a synonym for impartial and gained one for

indifferent.

Many words in frequent use, like nice and democracy, have meanings that are

more or less subjective and hence vague. For instance, after seeing a well-dressed

person take the arm of a blind and ragged person and escort that person across a

crowded street, a sentimental man remarked, “That was true democracy.” It was,

of course, ordinary human decency, as likely to occur in a monarchy or dictatorship

as in a democracy. The semantic element of the word democracy in the speaker’s

mind was ‘kindness to those less fortunate than oneself.’ He approved of such kind-

ness, as we all do, and because he regarded both kindness and democracy as good,

he equated the two.

Some words are generally used with very loose meanings, and we could not

easily get along without such words—nice, for instance, as in “She’s a nice person”

(meaning that she has been well brought up and is kind, gracious, and generally

well-mannered), in contrast to “That’s a nice state of affairs” (meaning it is a per-

fectly awful state of affairs). There is certainly nothing wrong with expressing plea-

sure and appreciation to a hostess by a heartfelt “I’ve had a very nice [or even

“awfully nice”] time.” To seek for a more “accurate” word, one of more precise

meaning, would be self-conscious and affected. Vagueness is often useful.

Etymology and Meaning

The belief is widespread, even among some otherwise well-informed people, that

what a word means today is what it meant in the past—preferably what it meant

originally, if it were possible to discover that. Such belief is frequent for borrowed

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words, the mistaken idea being that the meaning of the word in our English and the

meaning of the foreign word from which the English word was derived must be, or

at least ought to be, the same. An appeal to etymology to determine today’s mean-

ing of a word is as unreliable as an appeal to spelling to determine modern pronun-

ciation. Change of meaning—semantic change—may, and frequently does, alter the

so-called etymological sense, which may have become altogether obsolete. (The ety-

mological sense is only the earliest sense we can discover, not necessarily the very

earliest.) The study of etymologies is richly rewarding. It may, for instance, throw

light on how a present-day meaning developed or reveal something about the work-

ing of the human mind, but it is of no help in determining for us what a word

“actually” means today.

Certain popular writers, overeager to display their learning, have asserted that

words are misused when they depart from their etymological meanings. Thus

Ambrose Bierce in what he called a “blacklist of literary faults” declared that dilap-

idated, because of its ultimate derivation from Latin lapis ‘stone,’ could appropri-

ately be used only of a stone structure. Such a notion, if true, would commit us to

the parallel assertions that only what actually has roots can properly be eradicated,

since eradicate is ultimately derived from Latin radix ‘root’; that calculation be

restricted to counting pebbles (Latin calx ‘stone’); and that sinister be applied only

to leftists and dexterous to rightists. By the same token we should have to insist that

we could admire only what we could wonder at, inasmuch as the English word

comes from Latin ad ‘at’ plus mīrāri ‘to wonder’—as indeed Hamlet so used it in

“Season your admiration for a while / With an attent eare.” Or we might insist

that giddy persons must be divinely inspired, inasmuch as gid is a derivative of

god (enthusiastic, from Greek, also had this meaning), or that only men may be vir-

tuous, because virtue is derived from Latin virtus ‘manliness,’ itself a derivative of

vir ‘man.’ Now, alas for the wicked times in which we live, virtue is applied to few

men and not many women. Virile, also a derivative of vir, has retained all of its

earlier meaning and has even added to it.

From these few examples, it must be obvious that we cannot ascribe anything

like “fixed” meanings to words. Meanings are variable and have often wandered

far from what their etymologies suggest. To suppose that invariable meanings

exist, quite apart from context, is to be guilty of a type of naïveté that vitiates clear

thinking.

How Meaning Changes

Meaning is particularly likely to change in a field undergoing rapid expansion and

development, such as computer technology. All of the following terms had earlier

meanings that were changed when they were applied to computers: bookmark,

boot, floppy, mail, mouse, notebook, save, server, spam, surf, virtual, virus, wall-

paper, web, window, zip.

How such words change their meaning, though unpredictable, is not chaotic, but

follows certain paths. First, it is necessary to distinguish between the sense—literal

meaning or denotation—of an expression and its associations or connotations.

Father, dad, and the old man may all refer to the same person, but the associations

of the three expressions are likely to be different, as are those of other synonymous

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terms like dada, daddy, governor, pa, pappy, pater, poppa, pops, and sire. Words

change in both their senses and their associations. A sense may expand to include

more referents than it formerly had (generalization), contract to include fewer refer-

ents (specialization), or shift to include a quite different set of referents (transfer of

meaning). The associations of a word may become worse (pejoration) or better (ame-

lioration) and stronger or weaker than they formerly were. Each of these possibilities

is examined below.

GENERALIZATION AND SPECIALIZATION

One classification of meaning is based on the scope of things to which a word can

apply. That is to say, meaning may be generalized (extended, widened), or it may

be specialized (restricted, narrowed). When we increase the scope of a word, we

reduce the number of features in its definition that restrict its application. For

instance, tail in earlier times seems to have meant ‘hairy caudal appendage, as of a

horse.’ When we eliminated the hairiness (or the horsiness) from the meaning, we

increased its scope, so that in Modern English the word means simply ‘caudal

appendage’ or more generally ‘the last part’ of anything.

Similarly, a mill was earlier a place for making things by the process of grind-

ing, that is, for making meal. The words meal and mill are themselves related, as

one might guess from their similarity. A mill is now, however, a place for making

or processing things: the grinding has been eliminated, so that we may speak of a

cotton mill, a steel mill, or even a gin mill. The word corn earlier meant ‘grain’ and

is in fact related to the word grain. It is still used in this general sense in Britain, as

in the “Corn Laws,” but specifically it may refer there to either oats (for animals)

or wheat (for human beings). In American usage, corn denotes ‘maize,’ which is of

course not at all what Keats meant in his “Ode to a Nightingale” when he

described Ruth as standing “in tears amid the alien corn.”

The building in which corn, regardless of its meaning, is stored is called a barn.

Barn earlier denoted a storehouse for barley; the word is, in fact, a compound of

two Old English words, bere ‘barley’ and ærn ‘house.’ By eliminating the barley fea-

ture of its earlier sense, the scope of this word has been extended to mean a store-

house for any kind of grain. American English has still further generalized the term

by eliminating the grain, so that barn may mean also a place for housing livestock or,

more recently, a warehouse (a truck barn), a building for sales (an antique barn), or

merely a large, open structure (a barn of a hotel).

The opposite of generalization is specialization, a process in which, by adding

to the features of meaning, the referential scope of a word is reduced. Deer, for

instance, used to mean simply ‘animal’ (OE dēor), as its German cognate Tier still

does. Shakespeare writes of “Mice, and Rats, and such small Deare” (King Lear).

By adding something particular (the family Cervidae) to the sense, the scope of the

word has been reduced, and it has come to mean a specific kind of animal.

Similarly hound used to mean ‘dog,’ like its German cognate Hund. To this earlier

meaning we have added the idea of hunting and thereby restricted the scope of the

word, which to us means a special sort of dog, a hunting dog. To the earlier content

of liquor ‘fluid’ (compare liquid) we have added ‘alcoholic.’

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Meat once meant simply ‘solid food’ of any kind, a meaning that it retains in

sweetmeat and throughout the King James Bible (“meat for the belly,” “meat and

drink”), though it acquired the more specialized meaning ‘flesh’ by the late Middle

English period. Starve (OE steorfan) used to mean simply ‘to die,’ as its German

cognate sterben still does. Chaucer writes, for instance, “But as hire man I wol ay

lyve and sterve” (Troilus and Criseyde). A specific way of dying had to be

expressed by a following phrase—for example, “of hunger, of cold.” The OED

cites “starving with the cold” as late as 1867. The word came to be associated pri-

marily with death by hunger, and for a while there existed a compound verb

hunger-starve. Although the usual meaning of starve now is ‘to die of hunger,’ we

also use the phrase “starve to death,” which in earlier times would have been tauto-

logical. An additional, toned-down meaning grows out of hyperbole, so that “I’m

starving” may mean only ‘I’m very hungry.’ The word, of course, is used figuratively,

as in “starving for love,” which, as we have seen, once meant ‘dying for love.’ This

word furnishes a striking example of specialization and proliferation of meaning.

TRANSFER OF MEANING

There are a good many ways to transfer a word’s meaning. Long and short are

metaphorically transferred from space to time in a long day, a short while; similarly

with such nouns as length (of a room or a conversation) and space (of a field or an

hour). Metaphor is also involved when we extend the word foot ‘lowest extremity

of an animal’ to other things, as in foot of a mountain, tree, and so forth, because

those are alike in being at the bottom of their things. The meaning of foot is shifted

in a different way (by metonymy) when we use it for a length of twelve inches, by

associating part of our anatomy with its typical length. We do much the same thing

with hand when we use it as a unit of measure for the height of horses. The some-

what similar synecdoche involves equating more and less comprehensive terms, as

in using cat for any ‘feline’ (lion, tiger, etc.), or earth ‘ground’ for the planet of

which it is a part, or wheels for ‘car.’

Meaning may be transferred from one sensory faculty to another (synesthesia),

as when we use clear for what we can hear rather than see, as in clear-sounding.

Loud is transferred the opposite way, from hearing to sight, when we speak of

loud colors. Sweet, with primary reference to taste, may be extended to hearing

(sweet music), smell (“The rose smells sweet”), and all senses at once (a sweet per-

son). Sharp may be transferred from feeling to taste, and so may smooth. Warm

may shift its usual reference from feeling to sight, as in warm colors, and along

with cold may refer in a general way to all senses, as in a warm (cold) welcome.

Abstract meanings may evolve from more concrete ones. In prehistoric Old

English times, the compound understand must have meant ‘to stand among,’ that

is, ‘close to’—under presumably having had the meaning ‘among,’ as do its

German and Latin cognates unter and inter. But this literal concrete meaning gave

way to the abstract sense the word has today. Parallel shifts from concrete to

abstract in words meaning ‘understand’ can be seen in German verstehen (‘to

stand before’), Greek epistamai (‘I stand upon’), Latin comprehendere (‘to take

hold of’), and Italian capire, based on Latin capere ‘to grasp,’ among others.

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The first person to use grasp in an abstract sense, as in “He has a good grasp of

his subject,” was coining a metaphor. But the shift from concrete to abstract, or

from physical to mental, has been so complete that we no longer think of this

usage as metaphorical: grasp has come to be synonymous with comprehension in

some contexts, even though in other uses the word has retained its physical refer-

ence. It was similar with glad, earlier ‘smooth,’ though this word has completely

lost the earlier meaning (except in the proper name Gladstone, if surnames may be

thought of as having such meaning) and may now refer only to a mental state.

Likewise, meaning may shift from subjective to objective, as when pitiful, earlier

‘full of pity, compassionate,’ came to mean ‘deserving of pity’; or the shift may be

the other way around, as when fear, earlier an objective ‘danger,’ came to mean

‘terror,’ a state of mind.

Association of Ideas

Change of meaning is often due to association of ideas, whether by metaphor,

metonymy, synecdoche, or otherwise, as discussed above. Latin penna, for

instance, originally meant ‘feather’ but came to be used to indicate an instrument

for writing, whether made of a feather or not, because of the association of the

quill with writing, hence our pen (via Old French). Similarly, paper is from papy-

rus, a kind of Egyptian plant, though paper is nowadays made from rags, wood,

straw, and the like. Sensational magazines used to be printed on paper of inferior

quality made from wood pulp. So they were derisively called wood-pulp maga-

zines, or simply pulps, in contrast to the slicks, those printed on paper of better

quality. A computer mouse is so called because of a fancied resemblance between

the little rodent and that instrument, with its tail-like cord and scurrying movement

on a pad. An electronic virus can affect the proper functions of a computer pro-

gram just as its biological namesake can a body of flesh. An extreme result of

such infection is a computer crash, in which electronic programs collapse, just as

a dynamited building or missile-hit airliner does.

Silver has come to be used for eating utensils made of silver—an instance of

synecdoche—and sometimes, by association, for flatware made of other substances,

so that we may speak of stainless steel or even plastic silverware. The product

derived from latex and earlier known as caoutchouc soon acquired a less difficult

name, rubber, from association with one of its earliest uses, making erasures on

paper by rubbing. China ‘earthenware’ originally designated porcelain of a type

first manufactured in the country whose name it bears. And the name of a native

American bird, turkey, derives from the fact that our ancestors somehow got the

notion that it was of Turkish origin. In French the same creature is called dinde,

that is, d’Inde ‘from India.’ The French thought that America was India at the time

when the name was conferred. These names arose out of associations long since lost.

Transfer from Other Languages

Other languages have also affected English word meanings. Thing, for example, in

Old English meant ‘assembly, court of law, legal case,’ a meaning that it had in the

other Germanic languages and has retained in Icelandic, as in Alþingi ‘all-assembly,’

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the name of the Icelandic parliament. Latin rēs denoted ‘object, possession, business

matter, legal case.’ Because of the overlapping legal uses, thing acquired the other

meanings of Latin rēs, that is, practically any thing. German Ding had, quite inde-

pendently, the same semantic history. A word whose meaning has been thus

affected by a foreign word with overlapping sense is called a calque.

Sound Associations

Similarity or identity of sound may likewise influence meaning. Fay, from the Old

French fae ‘fairy’ has influenced fey, from Old English fæ¯ge ‘fated, doomed to die’

to such an extent that fey is widely used nowadays in other senses, such as ‘fairy-

like, campy’ or ‘visionary.’ The two words are pronounced alike, and there is an

association of meaning at one small point: fairies are mysterious; so is being fated

to die, even though we all are so fated. There are many other instances of such con-

fusion through clang association (that is, association by sound rather than mean-

ing). For example, in conservative use fulsome means ‘offensively insincere’ as in

“fulsome praise,” but it is often used in the sense ‘extensive’ because of the clang

with full. Similarly, fruition is from Latin frui ‘to enjoy’ by way of Old French,

and the term originally meant ‘enjoyment’ but now usually means ‘state of bearing

fruit, completion’; and fortuitous earlier meant ‘occurring by chance’ but now is

generally used as a synonym for fortunate because of its similarity to that word.

PEJORATION AND AMELIORATION

In addition to a change in its sense or literal meaning, a word may also undergo

change in its associations, especially of value. A word may, as it were, go downhill,

or it may rise in the world; there is no way of predicting what its career may be.

Politician has had a downhill development, or pejoration (from Latin pejor

‘worse’). So has knave (OE cnafa), which used to mean simply ‘boy’—it is cognate

with German Knabe, which retains the earlier meaning. It came to mean ‘serving

boy’ (specialization), like that well-known knave of hearts who was given to steal-

ing tarts, and later ‘bad human being’ (pejoration and generalization) so that we

may now speak of an old knave or a knavish woman. On its journey downhill

this word has thus undergone both specialization and generalization; the knave in

cards (for which the usual American term is jack) is a further specialization. Boor

once meant ‘peasant’ but has also had a pejorative development. Its cognate Bauer

is the usual equivalent of jack or knave in German card playing, whence English

bower—as in right bower and left bower—in the card game euchre.

Lewd, earlier ‘lay, as opposed to clerical,’ underwent pejoration to ‘ignorant,’

‘base,’ and finally ‘obscene,’ which is the only meaning to survive. A similar fate

has befallen the Latin loanword vulgar, ultimately from vulgus ‘the common peo-

ple,’ although the earlier meaning is retained in Vulgar Latin, the Latin spoken by

ordinary people until it developed into the various Romance languages. Censure

earlier meant ‘opinion,’ but it has come to mean ‘bad opinion.’ Criticism is well

on its way to the same pejorative end, nowadays ordinarily meaning ‘adverse judg-

ment’ rather than earlier ‘analysis, evaluation.’ Deserts (as in just deserts) likewise

started out indifferently to mean simply what one deserved, whether good or bad,

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but has come to mean ‘punishment.’ A more complex example is silly (OE sæ¯lig),

earlier ‘timely,’ which first improved its meaning to ‘happy, blessed’ and then ‘inno-

cent, simple’; but because simplicity, a desirable quality under most circumstances,

was thought of as foolishness, the word developed our pejorative meaning. Its

German cognate selig progressed only to the second stage, though that word may

be used facetiously to mean ‘tipsy.’

The opposite of pejoration is amelioration, the improvement in value of a

word. Like censure and criticize, praise started out indifferently—it is simply

appraise ‘put a value on’ with loss of its initial unstressed syllable (aphesis). But

praise has come to mean ‘value highly.’ The meaning of the word has ameliorated,

or elevated. The development of nice, going back to Latin nescius ‘ignorant,’ is sim-

ilar. The Old French form used in English meant ‘simple,’ a meaning retained in

Modern French niais. In the course of its career in English, it has had the meanings

‘foolishly particular’ and then merely ‘particular’ (as in a nice distinction). Now it

often means no more than ‘pleasant’ or ‘proper,’ having become an all-purpose

word of approbation.

Amelioration is also illustrated by knight, which used to mean ‘servant,’ as its

German relative Knecht still does. This particular word has obviously moved far

from its earlier meaning, denoting as it usually now does a man who has been hon-

ored by his sovereign and who is entitled to prefix Sir to his name. Earl (OE eorl)

once meant simply ‘man,’ though in ancient Germanic times it was specially applied

to a warrior, who was almost invariably a man of high standing, in contrast to a

churl (OE ceorl ), or ordinary freeman. When the Norman kings brought many

French titles to England, earl remained as the equivalent of Continental count.

TABOO AND EUPHEMISM

Some words undergo pejoration because of a taboo against talking about the things

they name; the replacement for a taboo term is a euphemism (from a Greek word

meaning ‘good-sounding’). Euphemisms, in their turn, are often subject to pejora-

tion, eventually becoming taboo. Then the whole cycle starts again.

It is not surprising that superstition should play a part in change of meaning, as

when sinister, the Latin word for ‘left’ (the unlucky side), acquired its present bale-

ful significance. The verb die, of Germanic origin, is not once recorded in Old

English. Its absence from surviving documents does not necessarily mean that it

did not exist in Old English. But in the writings that have come down to us, round-

about expressions such as “go on a journey” are used instead, perhaps because of

superstitions connected with the word itself—superstitions that survive into our

own day, when people (at least those whom we know personally) “pass away,”

“go to sleep,” or “depart.” Louise Pound, the first woman president of the

Modern Language Association, collected an imposing and—to the irreverent—

amusing list of words and phrases referring to death in her article “American

Euphemisms for Dying, Death, and Burial.” She concluded that “one of mankind’s

gravest problems is to avoid a straightforward mention of dying or burial.”

Euphemism is especially frequent, and probably always has been, when we

must come face to face with the less happy facts of our existence, for life holds

even for the most fortunate of people experiences that are inartistic, violent, and

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hence shocking to contemplate in the full light of day—for instance, the first and

last facts of human existence, birth and death, despite the sentimentality with

which we have surrounded them. And it is certainly true that the sting of the latter

is somewhat alleviated—for the survivors, anyway—by calling it by some other

name, such as “the final sleep,” which is among the many terms cited by Pound in

the article just alluded to.

Mortician is a much flossier word than undertaker (which is itself a euphemism

with such earlier meanings as ‘helper,’ ‘contractor,’ ‘publisher,’ and ‘baptismal

sponsor’), but the loved one whom he prepares for public view and subsequent

interment in a casket (earlier a ‘jewel box,’ as in The Merchant of Venice) is just

as dead as a corpse in a coffin. Such verbal subterfuges are apparently thought to

rob the grave of some of its victory; the notion of death is thus made more tolerable

to human consciousness than it would otherwise be. Birth is much more plainly

alluded to nowadays than it used to be. There was a time, within the memory of

those still living, when pregnant was avoided in polite company. A woman who

was with child, going to have a baby, in a family way, or enceinte would deliver

during her confinement, or, if one wanted to be exceptionally fancy about it, her

accouchement.

Ideas of decency profoundly affect language. During the Victorian era, ladies

and gentlemen were very sensitive about using the word leg, limb being almost

invariably substituted, sometimes even if only the legs of a piano were being

referred to. In the very year that marks the beginning of Queen Victoria’s long

reign, Captain Frederick Marryat in his Diary in America (1837) noted the

American taboo on this word when, having asked a young American lady who

had taken a spill whether she had hurt her leg, she turned from him, “evidently

much shocked, or much offended,” later explaining to him that in America the

word leg was never used in the presence of ladies. Later, the captain visited a school

for young ladies where he saw, according to his own testimony, “a square piano-

forte with four limbs,” all dressed in little frilled pantalettes. For reasons that it

would be difficult to analyze, a similar taboo was placed on belly, stomach being

usually substituted for it, along with such nursery terms as tummy and breadbasket

and the advertising copywriter’s midriff.

Toilet, a diminutive of French toile ‘cloth,’ in its earliest English uses meant a

piece of cloth in which to wrap clothes; subsequently it came to be used for a

cloth cover for a dressing table, and then the table itself, as when Lydia Languish

in Sheridan’s The Rivals says, “Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick,

quick! Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilet—throw Roderick Random into the

closet.” (A century or so ago, the direction for the disposal of Roderick Random

would have been as laughable as that for Peregrine Pickle, for closet was then fre-

quently used for water closet, now practically obsolete, though the short form, WC,

is still used in Britain, especially in signs.) Toilet came to be used as a euphemism

for privy—itself a euphemism (‘private place’), as are latrine (ultimately derived

from Latin lavāre ‘to wash’) and lavatory (note the euphemistic phrase “to wash

one’s hands”). But toilet is now frequently replaced by rest room, comfort station,

powder room, the coy little boys’ (or girls’) room, or especially bathroom, even

though there may be no tub and no occasion for taking a bath. One may even

hear of a dog’s “going to the bathroom” in the living room. The British also use

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loo, a word of obscure origin, or Gents and Ladies for public facilities. It is safe to

predict that these evasions will in their turn come to be regarded as indecorous, and

other expressions will be substituted for them. Even in Old English, that facility

(another current term for it) was called goldhordhūs ‘gold hoard house, treasury.’

Euphemism is likewise resorted to in reference to certain diseases. Like terms

for birth, death, and excretion, those for disease are doubtless rooted in anxiety

and superstition. An ailment of almost any sort is often referred to as a condition

(heart condition, kidney condition, malignant condition, and so forth), so that con-

dition, hitherto a more or less neutral word, has thus had a pejorative development,

coming to mean ‘bad condition.’ (Although to have a condition means ‘to be in bad

health,’ to be in condition continues, confusingly enough, to mean ‘to be in good

health.’) Leprosy is no longer used by the American Medical Association because

of its connotations; it is now replaced by the colorless Hansen’s disease. Cancer

may be openly referred to, though it is notable that some astrologers have aban-

doned the term as a sign of the zodiac, referring instead to those born under

Cancer as “Moon Children.” The taboo has been removed from reference to the

various specific venereal diseases, formerly blood diseases or social diseases.

Recent years have seen a greater tendency toward straightforward language about

such matters. No euphemisms seem to have arisen for AIDS or HIV.

Old age and its attendant decay have probably been made more bearable for

many elderly people by calling them senior citizens. A similar verbal humanitarian-

ism is responsible for a good many other voguish euphemisms, such as underprivi-

leged ‘poor,’ now largely supplanted by disadvantaged; sick ‘insane’; and

exceptional child ‘a pupil of subnormal mentality.’ (Although children who exceed

expectations have been stigmatized as overachievers, they are also sometimes called

exceptional, apparently because of an assumption that any departure from the aver-

age is disabling.)

Sentimental equalitarianism has led us to attempt to dignify occupations by giv-

ing them high-sounding titles. Thus a janitor (originally a doorkeeper, from Janus,

the doorkeeper of heaven in Roman mythology) has become a custodian (one who

has custody), and teachers have become educators (a four-syllable term presumably

making the designee twice as important as does a two-syllable one). There are many

engineers who would not know the difference between a calculator and a cantilever.

H. L. Mencken (American Language) cites, among a good many others, demolition

engineer ‘house wrecker,’ sanitary engineer ‘garbage man,’ and extermination engi-

neer ‘rat catcher.’ The meaning of profession has been generalized to such an extent

that it may include practically any trade or vocation. Webster’s Third illustrates the

extended sense of the word with quotations referring to the “old profession of

farming” and “men who make it their profession to hunt the hippopotamus.” The

term has also been applied to plumbing, waiting on tables, and almost any other

gainful occupation. Such occupations are both useful and honorable, but they are

not professions according to the old undemocratic and now perhaps outmoded

sense of the term.

As long ago as 1838 James Fenimore Cooper in The American Democrat

denounced such subterfuges as boss for master and help for servant, but these

seem very mild nowadays. One of the great concerns of the progressive age in

which we live would seem to be to ensure that nobody’s feelings shall ever be

words and meanings

217

hurt—at least not by words. And so the coinage of new euphemisms in what has

been called “politically correct” language has made it often difficult to tell the seri-

ously used term (motivationally challenged ‘lazy’) from the satirical one (follicularly

challenged ‘bald’). As the Roman satirist Juvenal put it, “In the present state of the

world it is difficult not to write satire.”

THE FATE OF INTENSIFYING WORDS

Words rise and fall not only on a scale of goodness, by amelioration and pejora-

tion, but also on a scale of strength. Intensifiers constantly stand in need of replace-

ment, because they are so frequently used that their intensifying force is worn

down. As an adverb of degree, very has only an intensifying function; it has alto-

gether lost its independent meaning ‘truly,’ though as an adjective it survives with

older meanings in phrases like “the very heart of the matter” and “the very thought

of you.” Chaucer does not use very as an intensifying adverb; the usage was doubt-

less beginning to be current in his day, though the OED has no contemporary cita-

tions. The verray in Chaucer’s description of his ideal soldier, “He was a verray,

parfit gentil knyght,” is an adjective; the meaning of the line is approximately ‘He

was a true, perfect, gentle knight.’

For Chaucer and his contemporaries, full seems to have been the usual inten-

sifying adverb, though Old English swīðe (the adverbial form of swīð ‘strong’)

retained its intensifying function until the middle of the fifteenth century, with

independent meanings ‘rapidly’ and ‘instantly’ surviving much longer. Right was

also widely used as an intensifier in Middle English times, as in Chaucer’s descrip-

tion of the Clerk of Oxenford: “he nas [that is, ne was] nat right fat,” which is to

say, ‘He wasn’t very fat.’ This usage survives formally in Right Reverend, the title

of a bishop; in Right Honourable, that of members of the Privy Council and a few

other dignitaries; and in Right Worshipful, that of most lord mayors; as also in

the more or less informal usages right smart, right well, right away, right there,

and the like.

Sore, as in sore afraid, was similarly long used as an intensifier for adjectives

and adverbs; its use to modify verbs is even older. Its cognate sehr is still the usual

intensifier in German, in which language it has completely lost its independent use.

In view of the very understandable tendency of such intensifying words to

become dulled, it is not surprising that we should cast about for other words to

replace them when we really want to be emphatic. “It’s been a very pleasant even-

ing” seems quite inadequate under certain circumstances, and we may instead say,

“It’s been an awfully pleasant evening”; “very nice” may likewise become “terribly

nice.” In negative utterances, too is widely used as an intensifier: “Newberry’s not

too far from here”; “Juvenile-court law practice is not too lucrative.” Also common

in negative statements and in questions are that and all that: “I’m not that tired”;

“Is he all that eager to go to Daytona?”

Prodigiously was for a while a voguish substitute for very, so that a Regency

“blood” like Thackeray’s Jos Sedley might speak admiringly of a shapely woman

as “a prodigiously fine gel” or even a “monstrous fine” one. The first of these

now-forgotten intensifiers dates approximately from the second half of the seven-

teenth century; the second is about a century earlier. An anonymous contributor

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to the periodical The World in 1756 deplored the “pomp of utterance of our pres-

ent women of fashion; which, though it may tend to spoil many a pretty mouth,

can never recommend an indifferent one”; the writer cited in support of his state-

ment the overuse of vastly, horridly, abominably, immensely, and excessively as

intensifiers (Tucker 96).

SOME CIRCUMSTANCES OF SEMANTIC CHANGE

The meaning of a word may vary according to the group that uses it. For all speak-

ers, smart has the meaning ‘intelligent,’ but there is a specialized, especially British,

class usage in which it means ‘fashionable.’ The meaning of a smart woman may

thus vary with the social group of the speaker and may have to be inferred from the

context. The earliest meaning of this word seems to have been ‘sharp,’ as in a smart

blow. Sharp has also been used in the sense ‘up-to-date, fashionable,’ as in a sharp

dresser. But with the advent of grunge and bagginess, that use largely disappeared.

Similarly, a word’s meaning may vary according to changes in the thing to

which it refers. Hall (OE heall), for instance, once meant a very large roofed place,

like the splendid royal dwelling place Heorot, where Beowulf fought Grendel. Such

buildings were usually without smaller attached rooms, though Heorot had a

“bower” (būr), earlier a separate cottage, but in Beowulf a bedroom to which the

king and queen retired. (This word survives only in the sense ‘arbor, enclosure

formed by vegetation.’) For retainers, the hall served as meeting room, feasting

room, and sleeping room. Later hall came to mean ‘the largest room in a great

house,’ used for large gatherings such as receptions and feasts, though the use of

the word for the entire structure survives in the names of a number of manor

houses such as Little Wenham Hall and Speke Hall in England and of some dormi-

tory or other college buildings in America. A number of other meanings connote

size and some degree of splendor, a far cry from the modern use of hall as a narrow

passageway leading to rooms or as a vestibule or entrance passage immediately

inside the front door of a house.

Another modification of meaning results from a shift in point of view. Crescent,

from the present participle of Latin cresco, used to mean simply ‘growing, increas-

ing,’ as in Pompey’s “My powers are Cressent, and my Auguring hope / Sayes it

will come to’th’full” (Antony and Cleopatra). The new, or growing, moon was

thus called the crescent moon. There has been a shift, however, in the dominant ele-

ment of meaning, the emphasis coming to be put entirely on shape, specifically on a

particular shape of the moon, rather than upon growth. Crescent thus came to

denote the moon between its new and quarter phases, whether increasing or

decreasing, and then any similar shape, as in its British use for an arc-shaped street.

Similarly, in veteran (Latin veteranus, a derivative of vetus ‘old’), the emphasis has

shifted from age to military service, though not necessarily long service, as we may

speak of a young veteran. The fact that the phrase is etymologically self-

contradictory is of no significance as far as present usage is concerned. The word

is, of course, extended to other areas—for instance, veteran politician; in its

extended meanings it continues to connote long experience and usually mature

years as well.

words and meanings

219

Vogue for Words of Learned Origin

When learned words become popular, they almost inevitably develop new, often

less exact meanings. Philosophy, for instance, earlier ‘love of wisdom,’ has now a

popular sense ‘practical opinion or body of opinions,’ as in “the philosophy of

salesmanship” and “homespun philosophy.” An error in translation from a foreign

language may result in a useful new meaning—for example, psychological moment

means ‘most opportune time’ rather than ‘psychological momentum,’ which is the

proper translation of German psychologisches Moment, from which it comes. The

popular misunderstanding of inferiority complex, first used to designate an uncon-

scious sense of inferiority manifesting itself in assertive behavior, has given us a syn-

onym for diffidence, shyness. It is similar with guilt complex, now used to denote

nothing more psychopathic than a feeling of guilt. The term complex, as first used

by psychoanalysts more than a century ago, designated a type of aberration result-

ing from the unconscious suppression of emotions. The word soon passed into

voguish and subsequently into general use to designate an obsession of any kind—

a bee in the bonnet, as it were. Among its progeny are Oedipus complex, herd com-

plex, and sex complex. The odds on its increasing fecundity would seem to be

rather high.

Other fashionable terms from psychoanalysis and psychology, with which our

times are so intensely preoccupied, are subliminal ‘influencing behavior below the

level of awareness,’ with reference to a sneaky kind of advertising technique; behav-

ior pattern, meaning simply ‘behavior’; neurotic, with a wide range of meaning,

including ‘nervous, high-strung, artistic by temperament, eccentric, or given to

worry’; compulsive ‘habitual,’ as in compulsive drinker and compulsive criminal;

and schizophrenia ‘practically any mental or emotional disorder.’

It is not surprising that newer, popular meanings of what were once more or

less technical terms should generally show a considerable extension of the earlier

technical meanings. Thus, sadism has come to mean simply ‘cruelty’ and exhibition-

ism merely ‘showing off,’ without any of the earlier connotations of sexual perver-

sion. The word psychology itself may mean nothing more than ‘mental processes’ in

a vague sort of way. An intense preoccupation with what is fashionably and doubt-

less humanely referred to as mental illness—a less enlightened age than ours called

it insanity or madness, and people afflicted with it were said to be crazy—must to a

large extent be responsible for the use of such terms as have been cited. Also nota-

ble is the already mentioned specialization of sick to refer to mental imbalance.

A great darling among the loosely used pseudoscientific vogue words of recent

years is image in the sense ‘impression that others subconsciously have of someone.’

A jaundiced observer of modern life might well suppose that what we actually are is

not nearly so important as the image that we are able—to use another vogue word—to

project. If the “image” is phony, what difference does it make? In a time when political

campaigns are won or lost by the impression a candidate makes on the television

screen and therefore in opinion polls, image is all important.

A particularly important kind of image to convey, especially for politicians, is

the father image. Young people are apparently in great need of a father figure to

relate to, just as they require a role model to achieve the most successful lifestyle.

The last-mentioned expression, which has all but replaced the earlier voguish way

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of life, may refer to casual dress, jogging, homosexuality, the use of a Jacuzzi hot

tub, or a great many other forms of behavior that have little to do with what has

traditionally been thought of as style. Peer pressure from one’s peer group is often

responsible for the adoption of one “style” or another; the voguish use of peer has

doubtless seeped down from educationists, whose expertise in this, as in many other

matters, is greatly admired, although not always richly rewarded, by the “sponsor-

ing society.”

Among the more impressive vogue words of recent years are charisma and

charismatic ‘(having) popular appeal’ (earlier, ‘a spiritual gift, such as that of tongues

or prophesy’). The original sense of ambience or ambiance ‘surrounding atmo-

sphere, environment’ has shifted considerably in the description of a chair as

“crafted with a Spanish ambience” and has slipped away altogether in the puffery

of a restaurant said to have “great food, served professionally in an atmosphere of

ambiance.” Other popular expressions are scenario, paradigm, bottom line, and

empowerment.

Computer jargon has been a rich source of vogue words in recent years.

Although input and output have been around since the early sixteenth and mid

nineteenth centuries, respectively, their current fashionableness results from an

extension of their use for information fed into and spewed out of a computer.

Interface is another nineteenth-century term for the surface between any two sub-

stances—for example, oil floating on the top of a pan of water; it was taken up in

computer use to denote the equipment that presents the computer’s work for

human inspection, such as a printout or a monitor display. Now the word is used

as a noun to mean just ‘connection’ and as a verb to mean ‘connect’ or ‘work

together smoothly.’

Language and Semantic Marking

One of the awkward problems of English, and indeed of many languages, is a lack

of means for talking about persons without specifying their sex. Apparently sexual

differences have been so important for the human species and human societies that

most languages make obligatory distinctions between males and females in both

vocabulary and grammar. On those occasions, however, when one wishes to dis-

cuss human beings without reference to their sex, the obligatory distinctions are

bothersome and may be prejudicial. Consequently, in recent years many publishers

and editors have tried to eliminate both lexical and grammatical bias toward mas-

culine forms, which had been used generically for either sex.

The bias in question arises because of the phenomenon of semantic marking. A

word like sheep is unmarked for sex, since it is applicable to either males or females

of the species; there are separate terms marked for maleness (ram) and femaleness

(ewe) when they are needed. If terms for all species followed this model, no pro-

blems would arise, but unfortunately they do not. Duck is like sheep in being

unmarked for sex, but it has only one marked companion, namely, drake for the

male. Because we lack a single term for talking about the female bird, we must

make do with an ambiguity in the term duck, which refers either to a member of

the species without consideration of sex or to a female. An opposite sort of problem

arises with lion and lioness; the latter term is marked for femaleness, and the former

words and meanings

221

is unmarked and therefore used either for felines without consideration of sex or for

males of the species. The semantic features of these terms, as they relate to sex, can

be shown as follows (þ means ‘present,’ – ‘absent,’ and ± ‘unmarked’):

Sheep

Ram

Ewe

Duck

Drake

Lion

Lioness

Male

±

þ

–

±

þ

±

–

Female

±

–

þ

±

−

±

þ

Lions and ducks are quite unconcerned with what we call them, but we human

beings are very much concerned with what we call ourselves. Consequently, the

linguistic problem of referring to men and women is both complex and emotional.

Woman is clearly marked for femaleness, like lioness. Some persons interpret man

as unmarked for sex, like lion. Others point out that it is so often used for males in

contrast to females that it must be regarded as marked for maleness, like drake;

they also observe that because of the male connotations of man, women are often

by implication excluded from statements in which the word is used generically—for

example, “Men have achieved great discoveries in science during the last hundred

years.” By such language we may be led unconsciously to assume that males rather

than females are the achievers of our species. If, as some etymologists believe, the

word man is historically related to the word mind, its original sense was probably

something like ‘the thinker,’ and it clearly denoted the species rather than the sex.

In present use, however, the word is often ambiguous, as in the example cited a few

lines above. The ambiguity can be resolved by context: “Men (the species) are mor-

tal” versus “Men (the sex) have shorter lives than women.” Nevertheless, ambiguity

is sometimes awkward and often annoying to the linguistically sensitive.

To solve the problem, would-be linguistic engineers have proposed respellings

like womyn for women. (Wymen would be a phonetically more adequate, if politi-

cally less correct, spelling.) More realistically, editors and others have substituted

other words (such as person) whenever man might be used of both sexes. Thus we

have chairperson, anchorperson (for the one who anchors a TV news program),

layperson, and even straw person. The new forms were bound to call forth some

heavy-handed humor in forms like woperson. Other efforts to avoid sexual refer-

ence, such as supervisor in place of foreman and flight attendant in place of both

steward and stewardess, are now usual. And housespouse as a replacement for

both housewife and its newfound mate, househusband, has a lilt and a swagger

that make it appealing.

The grammatical problems of sexual reference are especially great in the

choice of a pronoun after indefinite pronouns like everyone, anyone, and some-

one. Following the model of unmarked man, handbooks have recommended

unmarked he in expressions like “Everyone tried his best,” with reference to a

mixed group. The other generally approved option, “Everyone tried his or her

best,” is wordy and can become intolerably so with repetition, as in “Everyone

who has not finished writing his or her paper before he or she is required to

move to his or her next class can take it with him or her.”

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In colloquial English, speakers long ago solved that problem by using the plural

pronouns they, them, their, and theirs after indefinites. As the narrator says in Jane

Austen’s Persuasion, “Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other

matters.” Although still abjured by the linguistically fastidious, such use of they

and its forms has been common for about 400 years, is increasing in formal

English, and has in fact been recommended by professional groups like the

National Council of Teachers of English. Idealists have also proposed a number of

invented forms to fill the gap, such as thon (from that one), he’er, he/she, and shem,

but almost no one has taken them seriously.

Language reformers in the past have not been notably successful in remodeling

English nearer to their hearts’ desire. The language has a way of following its own

course and leaving would-be guides behind. Whether the current interest in degen-

derizing language will have more lasting results than other changes proposed and

labored for is an open question. Unselfconscious speech long ago solved the gram-

matical problem with the everybody . . . they construction. If the lexical problem

is solved by the extended use of person and other epicene alternatives, we will

have witnessed a remarkable influence by those who edit books and periodicals.

Whatever the upshot, the contemporary concern is testimony to one kind of seman-

tic sensibility among present-day English speakers.

SEMANTIC CHANGE IS INEVITABLE

It is a great pity that language cannot be the exact, finely attuned instrument that

deep thinkers wish it to be. But the fact is, as we have seen, that the meaning of

every word is susceptible to change, and some words have changed meaning radi-

cally in the course of their history. It is probably safe to predict that the members of

the human race, homines sapientes more or less, will go on making absurd noises

with their mouths at one another in what idealists among them will go on consider-

ing a deplorably sloppy and inadequate manner, and yet manage to understand one

another well enough for their own purposes.

The idealists may, if they wish, settle upon Esperanto, Ido, Ro, Volapük, or any

other of the excellent scientific languages that have been laboriously constructed.

The game of constructing such languages is still going on. Some naively suppose

that, should one of these ever become generally used, there would be an end to mis-

understanding, followed by an age of universal brotherhood—on the assumption

that we always agree with and love those whom we understand. In fact, we fre-

quently disagree violently with those whom we understand very well. (Cain doubt-

less understood Abel well enough.)

But be that as it may, it should be obvious that, if such an artificial language

were by some miracle ever to be accepted and generally used, it would be suscepti-

ble to precisely the same changes in meaning that have been our concern in this

chapter as well as to such changes in structure as have been our concern through-

out—the kind of changes undergone by those natural languages that have evolved

over the eons. And most of the manifold phenomena of life—hatred, disease, fam-

ine, birth, death, sex, war, atoms, isms, and people, to name only a few—would

remain just as messy and unsatisfactory to those unwilling to accept them as they

have always been, regardless of what words we call them by.

words and meanings

223

FOR FURTHER READING

Overviews

Ayto. Movers and Shakers.

Goddard. Semantic Analysis.

Hurford, Heasley, and Smith. Semantics.

Jeffries. Meaning in English.

Kreidler. Introducing English Semantics.

Lakoff and Johnson. Metaphors We Live By.

Leech. Semantics.

Löbner. Understanding Semantics.

Some Semantic Categories

Allan and Burridge. Euphemism & Dysphemism.

Ayto. Euphemisms.

General Semantics

Hayakawa and Hayakawa. Language in Thought and Action.

Dictionaries

Merriam-Webster Online Search: http://www.merriam-webster.com/.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. CD-ROM.

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. CD-ROM.

±±±±±±±±±±

11 New Words from

C H A P T E R

±±±±±±± Old

The last chapter points out that new words are constantly entering the language.

This chapter examines five processes by which they do so: creating, combining,

shortening, blending, and shifting the grammatical uses of old words. Shifting the

meanings of old words is considered also in the preceding chapter, and borrowing

from other languages is considered in the next.

CREATING WORDS

Root Creations

Most new words come in one way or another from older words. To create a word

out of no other meaningful elements (a root creation) is a very rare phenomenon

indeed. The trade name Kodak is sometimes cited as such a word. It first appeared

in print in the U.S. Patent Office Gazette of 1888 and was, according to George

Eastman, who invented the word as well as the camera it names, “a purely arbi-

trary combination of letters, not derived in whole or in part from any existing

word” (Mencken, Supplement I), though his biographer points to the fact that his

mother’s family name began with the letter K.

Other commercial names—like those for the artificial fabrics nylon (a term

never trademarked), Dacron, and Orlon—also lack an etymology in the usual

sense. According to a Du Pont company publication (Context 7.2, 1978), when

nylon was first developed, it was called polyhexamethyleneadipamide. Realizing

the stuff needed a catchier name than that, the company thought of duprooh, an

acronym for “Du Pont pulls rabbit out of hat,” but instead settled on no-run until

it was pointed out that stockings made of the material were not really run-proof. So

the spelling of that word was reversed to nuron, which was modified to nilon to

make it sound less like a nerve tonic. Then, to prevent a pronunciation like

“nillon,” the company changed the i to y, producing nylon. If this account is

correct, beneath that apparently quite arbitrary word lurks the English expression

no-run. Most trade names are clearly based on already existing words. Vaseline,

for instance, was made from German Wasser ‘water’ plus Greek elaion ‘oil’

224

new words from old

225

(Mencken, American Language); Kleenex was made from clean and Cutex from

cuticle, both with the addition of a rather widely used but quite meaningless pseu-

doscientific suffix -ex.

Echoic Words

Sound alone is the basis of a limited number of words, called echoic or onomato-

poeic, like bang, burp, splash, tinkle, bobwhite, and cuckoo. Words that are actu-

ally imitative of sound, like meow, moo, bowwow, and vroom—though these differ

from language to language—can be distinguished from those like bump and flick,

which are called symbolic. Symbolic words regularly come in sets that rime

(bump, lump, clump, hump) or alliterate (flick, flash, flip, flop) and derive their

symbolic meaning at least in part from the other members of their sound-alike

sets. Both imitative and symbolic words frequently show doubling, sometimes with

slight variation, as in bowwow, choo-choo, and pe(e)wee.

Ejaculations

Some words imitate more or less instinctive vocal responses. One of these ejacula-

tions, ouch, is something of a mystery: it does not appear in British writing except

as an Americanism. The OED derives it from German autsch, an exclamation pre-

sumably imitative of what a German exclaims at fairly mild pain, such as stubbing

a toe or hitting a thumb with a tack hammer—hardly anything more severe, for

when one is suffering really rigorous pain one is not likely to have the presence of

mind to remember to say “Ouch!” The vocal reaction, if any, is likely to be a shriek

or a scream. Ouch may be regarded as a conventional representation of the sounds

actually made when one is in pain. The interesting thing is that the written form has

become so familiar, so completely conventionalized, that Americans (and Germans)

do actually say “Ouch!” when they have hurt themselves so slightly as to be able to

remember what they ought to say under the circumstances.

Other such written representations, all of them highly conventionalized, of what

are thought to be “natural utterances” have also become actual words—for instance,

ha-ha, with the variant ho-ho for Santa Claus and other jolly fat men, and the girlish

tehee, which the naughty but nonetheless delectable Alison utters in Chaucer’s

“Miller’s Tale,” in what is perhaps the most indecorously funny line in English

poetry.

Now, it is likely that, if Alison were a real-life woman (rather than better-

than-life, as she is by virtue of being the creation of a superb artist), upon receipt

of the misdirected kiss she might have tittered, twittered, giggled, or gurgled under

the decidedly improper circumstances in which she had placed herself. But how to

write a titter, a twitter, a giggle, or a gurgle? Chaucer was confronted with the

problem of representing by alphabetical symbols whatever the appropriate vocal

response might have been, and tehee, which was doubtless more or less conven-

tional in his day, was certainly as good a choice as he could have made. The

form with which he chose to represent girlish glee has remained conventional.

When we encounter it in reading, we think—and, if reading aloud, we actually say—

[tiˈhi], and the effect seems perfectly realistic to us. (Alison, in her pre-vowel-shift

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pronunciation, would presumably have said [teˈhe].) But it is highly doubtful that

anyone ever uttered tehee, or ha-ha, or ho-ho, except as a reflection of the written

form. Laughter, like pain, is too paroxysmal in nature, too varying from individ-

ual to individual, and too unspeechlike to be represented accurately by speech

sounds.

It is somewhat different with a vocal manifestation of disgust, contempt, or

annoyance, which might be represented phonetically (but only approximately) as

[č]. This was, as early as the mid-fifteenth century, represented as tush, and some-

what later less realistically as twish. Twish became archaic as a written form, but

[tǝš] survives as a spoken interpretation of tush.

Pish and pshaw likewise represent “natural” emotional utterances of disdain,

contempt, impatience, irritation, and the like, but have become conventionalized,

as shown by the citation in Webster’s Third for pish: “pished and pshawed a little

at what had happened.” Both began as something like [pš]. W. S. Gilbert combined

two such utterances to form the name of a “noble lord,” Pish-Tush, in The Mikado,

with two similarly expressive ones, Pooh-Bah, for the overweeningly aristocratic

“Lord High Everything Else.” Yum-Yum, the name of the delightful heroine of the

same opera, is similarly a conventionalized representation of sounds supposedly

made as a sign of pleasure in eating. From the interjection yum-yum comes the

adjective yummy, still childish in its associations—but give it time.

Pew or pugh is imitative of the disdainful sniff with which many persons react

to a bad smell, resembling a vigorously articulated [p]. But, as with the previous

examples, it has been conventionalized into a word pronounced [pyu] or prolong-

edly as [ˈpiˈyu]. Pooh (sometimes with reduplication as pooh-pooh) is a variant,

with somewhat milder implications. The reduplicated form may be used as a verb,

as in “He pooh-poohed my suggestion.” Fie, used for much the same purposes as

pew, is now archaic; it likewise represents an attempt at imitation. Faugh is proba-

bly a variant of fie; so, doubtless, is phew. Ugh, from a tensing of the stomach mus-

cles followed by a glottal stop, has been conventionalized as an exclamation of

disgust or horror or as a grunt attributed, in pre-ethnic-sensitive days, to American

Indians.

A palatal click, articulated by placing the tongue against the palate and then

withdrawing it, sucking in the breath, is an expression of impatience or contempt. It

is also sometimes used in reduplicated form (there may in fact be three or more such

clicks) in scolding children, as if to express shock and regret at some antisocial act. A

written form is tut(-tut), which has become a word in its own right, pronounced not

as a click but according to the spelling. However, tsk-tsk, which is intended to repre-

sent the same click, is also used with the pronunciation [ˈtɪskˈtɪsk]. Older written

forms are tchick and tck (with or without reduplication). Tut(-tut) has long been

used as a verb, as in Bulwer-Lytton’s “pishing and tutting” (1849) and Hall Caine’s

“He laughed and tut-tutted” (1894), both cited by the OED.

A sound we frequently make to signify agreement may be represented approxi-

mately as [ˌmˈhm]. This is written as uh-huh, and the written form is responsible for

the pronunciation [ˌǝˈhǝ]. The p of yep and nope was probably intended to repre-

sent the glottal stop frequently heard in the pronunciation of yes (without -s) and

no, but one also frequently hears [yɛp] and [nop], pronunciations doubtless based

on the written forms.

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The form brack or braak is sometimes used to represent the so-called Bronx

cheer. Eric Partridge (Shakespeare’s Bawdy) has suggested, however, that Hamlet’s

“Buz, buz!” spoken impatiently to Polonius, is intended to represent the vulgar

noise also known as “the raspberry.” (Raspberry in this sense comes from the

Cockney rhyming slang phrase raspberry tart for fart.)

In all these cases, some nonlinguistic sound effect came first—a cry of pain, a

giggle, a sneeze, or whatever. Someone tried to represent it in writing, always inad-

equately by a sequence of letters, which were then pronounced as a new word in

the language. And so the vocabulary of ejaculations grew.

COMBINING WORDS: COMPOUNDING

Creating words from nothing is comparatively rare. Most words are made from

other words, for example, by combining whole words or word parts. A compound

is made by putting two or more words together to form a new word with a mean-

ing in some way different from that of its elements—for instance, a blackboard

is not the same thing as a black board; indeed, nowadays many blackboards

are green, or some other color. Compounds may be spelled in three ways: solid,

hyphenated, or open (hatchback, laid-back, center back = a volleyball position), as

explained below. The choice between those three ways is unpredictable and

variable.

From earliest times compounding has been very common in English, as in other

Germanic languages as well. Old English has blīðheort ‘blitheheart(ed),’ eaxlgestella

‘shoulder-companion = comrade,’ brēostnet ‘breast-net = corslet,’ leornungcniht

‘learning retainer (knight) = disciple,’ wǣrloga ‘oath-breaker = traitor (warlock),’

woroldcyning ‘world-king = earthly king,’ fullfyllan ‘to fulfill,’ and many other such

compounds.

The compounding process has gone on continuously. Examples from recent

years are air kiss ‘a kissing motion next to the cheek,’ baby boomer, date rape,

downsize, drive-by shooting, ear bud ‘a small receiver placed in the ear to amplify

sound, as from a Walkman,’ eye candy ‘an attractive but intellectually undemand-

ing image,’ flat panel ‘a thin computer monitor,’ generation X (Y, etc.), glass ceiling,

ground zero, mommy (or daddy) track, road (or air) rage, smart card, soccer mom,

and voice mail. The Internet has been particularly fecund in producing new terms,

such as dot bomb ‘a failed Internet business’ (a pun on dot-com ‘a company that

operates on the Web,’ from the domain suffix “.com”), Internet café, laptop, pop-

under ‘an ad at the bottom of the browser window,’ search engine, webcasting,

weblog (the second element ultimately from a ship’s log[book]), and webmaster.

Spelling and Pronunciation of Compounds

Compound adjectives are usually hyphenated, like one-horse, loose-jointed, and

front-page, though some that are particularly well established, such as outgoing,

overgrown, underbred, and forthcoming, are solid. It is similar with compound

verbs, like overdo, broadcast, sidestep, beside double-date and baby-sit, though

these sometimes occur as two words. Compound nouns are likewise inconsistent:

we write ice cream, Boy Scout, real estate, post office, high school as two words;

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we hyphenate sit-in, go-between, fire-eater, higher-up; but we write solid icebox,

postmaster, highlight. Hyphenation varies to some extent with the dictionary one

consults, the style books of editors and publishers, and individual whim, among

other factors. Many compound prepositions like upon, throughout, into, and

within are written solid, but others like out of have a space. Also written solid are

compound adverbs such as nevertheless, moreover, and henceforth and compound

pronouns like whoever and myself. (For a study of the writing of compounds, see

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 30a–31a.)

A more significant characteristic of compounds—one that tells us whether we

are dealing with two or more words used independently or as a lexical unit—is

their tendency to be more strongly stressed on one or the other of their elements,

in contrast to the more or less even stress characteristic of phrases. A man-eating

shrimp would be a quite alarming marine phenomenon; nevertheless, the contrast-

ing primary and secondary stresses of man and eat (symbolized by the hyphen)

make it perfectly clear that we are here concerned with a hitherto unheard-of

anthropophagous decapod. There is, however, nothing in the least alarming about

a man eating shrimp, with approximately even stresses on man and eat.

The primary-secondary stress in compounds marks the close connection

between the constituents that gives the compound its special meaning. In effect, it

welds together the elements and thus makes the difference between the members of

the following pairs:

hotbed: ‘place encouraging rapid growth’

hot bed: ‘warm sleeping place’

highbrow: ‘intellectual’

high brow: ‘result of receding hair’

blackball: ‘vote against’

black ball: ‘ball colored black’

greenhouse: ‘heated structure to grow plants’

green house: ‘house painted green’

makeup: ‘cosmetics’

make up: ‘reconcile’

headhunter: ‘savage or recruiter of executives’

head hunter: ‘leader on a safari’

loudspeaker: ‘sound amplifier’

loud speaker: ‘noisy talker’

In compound nouns, it is usually the first element that gets the primary stress,

as in all the examples above, but in adverbs and prepositions, it is the last

(nèvertheléss, withóut). For verbs and pronouns it is impossible to generalize

(bróadcàst, fulfíll, sómebody [or sómebòdy], whòéver). The important thing is the

unifying function of stress for compounds of whatever sort.

Generally when complete loss of secondary stress occurs, phonetic change occurs

as well. For instance, Énglish mán, having in the course of compounding become

Énglish-màn, proceeded to become Énglishman [-mǝn]. The same vowel reduction

has occurred in highwayman ‘robber,’ gentleman, horseman, and postman, but not

in businessman, milkman, and iceman. It is similar with the [-lǝnd] of Maryland,

Iceland, woodland, and highland as contrasted with the secondarily stressed final

syllables of such newer compounds as wonderland, movieland, and Disneyland;

with the -folk of Norfolk and Suffolk (there is a common American pronunciation

of the former with [-ˌfok] and, by assimilation, with [-ˌfɔrk]); and with the -mouth

of Portsmouth, the -combe of Wyecombe, the -burgh of Edinburgh (usually [-brǝ]),

and the -stone of Folkestone ([-stǝn]). Even more drastic changes occur in the final

syllables of coxswain [ˈkɑksǝn], Keswick [ˈkɛsɪk], and Durham [ˈdǝrǝm] (though in

Birmingham, as the name of a city in Alabama, the -ham is pronounced as the

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229

spelling suggests it should be). Similarly drastic changes occur in both syllables of

boatswain [ˈbosǝn], forecastle [ˈfoksǝl], breakfast, Christmas (that is, Christ’s mass),

cupboard, and Greenwich. (Except for Greenwich Village in New York and

Greenwich, Connecticut, the American place name is usually pronounced as spelled,

rather than as [grɛnɪč] or [grɛnɪǰ]. The British pronunciation is sometimes [grɪnɪǰ].)

Perhaps it is lack of familiarity with the word—just as the landlubber might

pronounce boatswain as [ˈbotˌswen]—that has given rise to an analytical pronunci-

ation of clapboard, traditionally [ˈklæbǝrd]. Grindstone and wristband used to

be respectively [ˈgrɪnstǝn] and [ˈrɪzbǝnd]. Not many people have much occasion

to use either word nowadays; consequently, the older tradition has been lost, and

the words now have secondary stress and full vowels instead of [ǝ] in their last

elements. The same thing has happened to waistcoat, now usually [ˈwestˌkot]; the

traditional [ˈwɛskǝt] has become old-fashioned. Lack of familiarity can hardly

explain the new analysis of forehead as [ˈforˌhɛd] rather than the traditional

[ˈfɔrǝd]; consciousness of the spelling is responsible.

Amalgamated Compounds

The phonetic changes we have been considering have the effect of welding the

elements of certain compounds so closely together that, judging from sound (and

frequently also from their appearances when written), one would sometimes not

suspect that they were indeed compounds. In daisy, for instance, phonetic reduction

of the final element has caused that element to be identical with the suffix -y.

Geoffrey Chaucer was quite correct when he referred to “The dayesyë, or elles the

yë [eye] of day” in the prologue to The Legend of Good Women, for the word is

really from the Old English compound dægesēage ‘day’s eye.’ The -y of daisy is thus

not an affix like the diminutive -y of Katy or the -y from Old English -ig of hazy;

instead, the word is from a historical point of view a compound.

Such closely welded compounds were called amalgamated by Arthur G.

Kennedy (Current English 350), who lists, among a good many others, as (OE eal

‘all’ þ swā ‘so’), garlic (OE gār ‘spear’ þ lēac ‘leek’), hussy (OE hūs ‘house’ þ wīf

‘woman, wife’), lord (OE hlāf ‘loaf’ þ weard ‘guardian’), marshal (OE mearh

‘horse’ þ scealc ‘servant’), nostril (OE nosu ‘nose’ þ þyrel ‘hole’), and sheriff (OE

scīr ‘shire’ þ (ge)rēfa ‘reeve’). Many proper names are such amalgamated com-

pounds—for instance, among place names, Boston (‘Botulf’s stone’), Bewley (Fr.

beau ‘beautiful’ þ lieu ‘place’), Sussex (OE sūþ ‘south’ þ Seaxe ‘Saxons’; compare

Essex and Middlesex), and Norwich (OE norþ ‘north’ þ wīc ‘village’). Norwich is

traditionally pronounced to rime with porridge, as in a nursery jingle about a man

from Norwich who ate some porridge; the name of the city in Connecticut is,

however, pronounced as the spelling seems to indicate. The reader will find plenty

of other interesting examples in Eilert Ekwall’s Concise Oxford Dictionary of

English Place-Names. It is similar with surnames (which are, of course, sometimes

place names as well)—for instance, Durward (OE duru ‘door’ þ weard ‘keeper’),

Purdue (Fr. pour ‘for’ þ Dieu ‘God’), and Thurston (‘Thor’s stone,’ ultimately

Scandinavian); and with a good many given names as well—for instance, Ethelbert

(OE æðel ‘noble’ þ beorht ‘bright’), Alfred (OE ælf ‘elf’ þ rǣd ‘counsel’), and

Mildred (OE milde ‘mild’ þ þryþ ‘strength’).

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Function and Form of Compounds

The making of a compound is inhibited by few considerations other than those

dictated by meaning. A compound may be used in any grammatical function: as

noun (wishbone), pronoun (anyone), adjective (foolproof), adverb (overhead), verb

(gainsay), conjunction (whenever), or preposition (without). It may be made up of

two nouns (baseball, mudguard, manhole); of an adjective followed by a noun

(bluegrass, madman, first-rate); of a noun followed by an adjective or a participle

(bloodthirsty, trigger-happy, homemade, heartbreaking, time-honored); of a verb

followed by an adverb (pinup, breakdown, setback, cookout, sit-in); of an adverb

followed by a verb form (upset, downcast, forerun); of a verb followed by a noun

that is its object (daredevil, blowgun, touch-me-not); of a noun followed by a verb

(hemstitch, pan-fry, typeset); of two verbs (can-do, look-see, stir-fry); of an adverb

followed by an adjective or a participle (overanxious, oncoming, well-known,

uptight); of a preposition followed by its object (overland, indoors); or of a participle

followed by an adverb (washed-up, carryings-on, worn-out). Some compounds are

welded-together phrases: will-o’-the-wisp, happy-go-lucky, mother-in-law, tongue-in-

cheek, hand-to-mouth, and lighter-than-air. Many compounds are made of adjective

plus noun plus the ending -ed—for example, baldheaded, dimwitted, and hairy-

chested—and some of noun plus noun plus -ed—for example, pigheaded and

snowcapped.

COMBINING WORD PARTS: AFFIXING

Affixes from Old English

Another type of combining is affixation, the use of prefixes and suffixes. Many

affixes were at one time independent words, like the insignificant-seeming a- of

aside, alive, aboard, and a-hunting, which was earlier on but lost its -n, just as an

did when unstressed and followed by a consonant (122). Another is the -ly of many

adjectives, like manly, godly, and homely, which developed from Old English līc

‘body.’ When so used, līc (which became lic and eventually -ly through lack of

stress) originally meant something like ‘having the body or appearance of’: thus the

literal meaning of manly is ‘having the body or form of a man.’ Old English regu-

larly added -e to adjectives to make adverbs of them (98–9)—thus riht ‘right,’ rihte

‘rightly.’ Adjectives formed with -lic acquired adverbial forms in exactly the same

way—thus cræftlic ‘skillful,’ cræftlice ‘skillfully.’ With the late Middle English loss

of both final -e and final unstressed -ch, earlier Middle English -lich and -liche fell

together as -li (-ly). Because of these losses, we do not ordinarily associate Modern

English -ly with like, the Northern dialect form of the full word that ultimately was

to prevail in all dialects of English. In Modern English the full form has been used

again as a suffix—history thus repeating itself—as in gentlemanlike and godlike,

beside gentlemanly and godly.

Other prefixes surviving from Old English times include the following:

AFTER-: as in aftermath, aftereffect, afternoon

BE-: the unstressed form of by (OE bī), as in believe, beneath, beyond, behalf, between

FOR-: either intensifying, as in forlorn, or negating, as in forbid, forswear

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231

MIS-: as in misdeed, misalign, mispronounce

OUT-: Old English ūt-, as in outside, outfield, outgo

UN-: for an opposite or negative meaning, as in undress, undo, unafraid, un-English;

uncola was originally an advertising slogan for the soft drink 7 Up as an alterna-

tive to colas but was metaphorically extended in “France [wants] to become the

world’s next great ‘Uncola,’ the leader of the alternative coalition to American

power.” (NY Times, Feb. 26, 2003)

UNDER-: as in understand, undertake, underworld

UP-: as in upright, upheaval, upkeep

WITH-: ‘against,’ as in withhold, withstand, withdraw

Other suffixes that go back at least to Old English times are the following:

-DOM: Old English dōm, earlier an independent word that has developed into doom, in

Old English meaning ‘judgment, statute,’ that is, ‘what is set,’ and related to do;

as in freedom, filmdom, kingdom

-ED: used to form adjectives from nouns, as in storied, crabbed, bowlegged

-EN: also to form adjectives, as in golden, oaken, leaden

-ER: Old English -ere, to form nouns of agency, as in singer, baby sitter, do-gooder, a

suffix that, when it occurs in loanwords—for instance, butler (from Anglo-French

butuiller ‘bottler, manservant having to do with wines and liquors’) and butcher

(from Old French, literally ‘dealer in flesh of billy goats’)—goes back to Latin

-ārius, but that is nevertheless cognate with the English ending

-FUL: to form adjectives, as in baleful, sinful, wonderful, and, with secondary stress, to

form nouns as well, as in handful, mouthful, spoonful

-HOOD: Old English -hād, as in childhood and priesthood, earlier an independent word

meaning ‘condition, quality’

-ING: Old English -ung or -ing, to form verbal nouns, as in reading

-ISH: Old English -isc, to form adjectives, as in English and childish

-LESS: Old English -lēas ‘free from’ (also used independently and cognate with loose), as

in wordless, reckless, hopeless

-NESS: to form abstract nouns from many adjectives (and some participles), as in friend-

liness, learnedness, obligingness

-SHIP: Old English -scipe, to form abstract nouns, as in lordship, fellowship, worship

(that is, ‘worth-ship’)

-SOME: Old English -sum, to form adjectives, as in lonesome, wholesome, winsome (OE

wynn ‘joy’ þ sum)

-STER: Old English -estre, originally feminine, as in spinster ‘female spinner’ and webster

‘female weaver,’ but later losing all sexual connotation, as in gangster and

speedster

-TH: to form abstract nouns, as in health, depth, sloth

-WARD: as in homeward, toward, outward

-Y: Old English -ig, to form adjectives as in thirsty, greedy, bloody

There are several homonymous -y suffixes in addition to the one of Old

English origin. The diminutive -y (or -ie) of Kitty, Jackie, and baby is from another

source and occurs first in Middle English times. It is still available for forming new

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diminutives, just as we continue to form adjectives with the -y from Old English -

ig—for example, jazzy, loony, iffy. The -y’s in loanwords from Greek (phlebot-

omy), Latin (century), and French (contrary, perjury, army) cannot be extended

to new words.

Many affixes from Old English may still be used to create new words. They

may be affixed to nonnative words, as in mispronounce, obligingness, czardom,

pocketful, Romish, coffeeless, orderly (-liness), and sugary (-ish). Other affixes,

very common in Old English, have survived only as fossils, like ge- in enough (OE

genōg, genōh), afford (OE geforðian), aware (OE gewǣr), handiwork (OE handge-

weorc), and either (OE ǣgðer, a contracted form of ǣg[e]hwæðer). And- ‘against,

toward,’ the English cognate of Latin anti-, survives only in answer (OE andswaru,

literally ‘a swearing against’) and, in unstressed form with loss of both n and d, in

along (OE andlang).

Affixes from Other Languages

The languages with which English has had closest cultural contacts—Latin, Greek,

and French—have supplied a number of affixes freely used to make new English

words. One of the most common is Greek anti- ‘against,’ which, in addition to

long-established learned words like antipathy, antidote, and anticlimax, since the

seventeenth century has been used in many American creations—for instance,

anti-Federalist, anti-Catholic, antitobacco, antislavery, antisaloon, antiaircraft,

and antiabortion. Pro- ‘for’ has been somewhat less productive. Super-, as in

superman, supermarket, and superhighway, has even become an informal adjective,

as in “Our new car’s super”; there is also a reduplicated form superduper ‘very

super.’ Other foreign prefixes are ante-, de-, dis-, ex-, inter-, multi-, neo-, non-,

post-, pre-, pseudo-, re-, semi-, sub-, and ultra-. Even rare foreign prefixes like

eu- (‘good’ from Greek) have novel uses; J. R. R. Tolkien invented eucatastrophe as

an impressive term for ‘happy ending.’

Borrowed suffixes that have been added to English words (whatever their ulti-

mate origin) include the following:

-ESE: Latin -ēnsis by way of Old French, as in federalese, journalese, educationese

-(I)AN: Latin -(i)ānus, used to form adjectives from nouns, as in Nebraskan, Miltonian

-(I)ANA: from the neuter plural of the same Latin ending, which has a limited use

nowadays in forming nouns from other nouns, as in Americana, Menckeniana

-ICIAN: Latin -ic- þ -iānus, as in beautician, mortician

-IZE: Greek -izein, a very popular suffix for making verbs, as in pasteurize, criticize,

harmonize

-OR: Latin, as in chiropractor and realtor

-ORIUM: Latin, pastorium ‘Baptist parsonage,’ crematorium ‘place used for cremation,’

cryotorium ‘place where frozen dead are stored until science can reanimate

them’

One of the most used of borrowed suffixes is -al (Lat. -alis), which makes

adjectives from nouns, as in doctoral, fusional, hormonal, and tidal. The continued

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233

productivity of that suffix can be seen in the decree of a chief censor for the NBC

television network: “No frontal nudity, no backal nudity, and no sidal nudity.”

Voguish Affixes

Though no one can say why—probably just fashion—certain affixes have been pop-

ular during certain periods. For instance, -wise affixed to nouns and adjectives to

form adverbs, such as likewise, lengthwise, otherwise, and crosswise, was practi-

cally archaic until approximately the 1940s. The OED cites a few new examples

in modern times—for instance, Cardinal-wise (1677), festoonwise (1743), and

Timothy- or Titus-wise (1876). But around 1940 a mighty proliferation of words in

-wise began—for instance, budgetwise, saleswise, weatherwise, healthwise—and

hundreds of others continued to be invented: drugwise, personalitywise, security-

wise, timewise, salarywise, and fringe-benefitwise. Such coinages are useful addi-

tions to the language because they are more concise than phrases with in respect

of or in the manner of.

Type has enjoyed a similar vogue and is freely used as a suffix. It forms adjec-

tives from nouns, as in “Catholic-type bishops” and “a Las Vegas–type revue.”

Like -wise, -type is also economical, enabling us to shortcut such locutions as

bishops of the Catholic type and a revue of the Las Vegas type.

The suffix -ize, listed above, has had a centuries-old life as a means of making

verbs from nouns and adjectives, not only in English, but in other languages as

well—for instance, French -iser, Italian -izare, Spanish -izar, and German -isieren.

Many English words with this suffix are borrowings from French—for instance

(with z for French s), authorize, moralize, naturalize; others are English formations

(though some of them may have parallel formations in French)—for instance,

concertize, patronize, fertilize; still others are formed from proper names—for

instance, bowdlerize, mesmerize, Americanize. In the last half century, many new

creations have come into being, such as accessorize, moisturize, sanitize, glamorize,

and tenderize. Finalize descended to general use from the celestial mists of bureau-

cracy, business, and industry, where nothing is merely ended, finished, or concluded.

It is a great favorite of administrators of all kinds and sizes—including the academic.

In Greek, nouns of action were formed with the ending -ismos or -isma, as in

the loanwords ostracism and criticism. New uses of the suffix -ism have developed

in English. The prejudice implied in racism has extended to sexism, ageism, and

speciesism ‘human treatment of other animals as mere objects.’ Other popular deri-

vatives are Me-ism ‘selfishness,’ foodism ‘gluttony,’ volunteerism ‘donated service,’

and presidentialism ‘respect for and confidence in the office of president.’ The suffix

-ism is even used as an independent word, as in “creeds and isms.” The suffix

-ology has also been so used to mean ‘science,’ as in “Chemistry, Geology,

Philology, and a hundred other ologies.” The prefixes anti-, pro-, con-, and ex-,

are likewise used as independent words.

De-, a prefix of Latin origin with negative force, is much alive. Though many

words beginning with it are from Latin or French, it has for centuries been used to

form new English words. Noah Webster first used demoralize and claimed to have

coined it, though it could just as well be from French démoraliser. Other creations

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with the prefix are defrost, dewax, debunk, and more pompous specimens such as

debureaucratize, dewater, deinsectize, and deratizate ‘get rid of rats.’ Two other

more familiar words are decontaminate and dehumidify, pompous ways of saying

‘purify’ and ‘dry out.’ A somewhat different sense of the prefix in debark has led

to debus, detrain, and deplane. Dis-, likewise from Latin, is also freely used in a neg-

ative function, particularly in officialese, as in disincentive ‘deterrent,’ disassemble

‘take apart,’ and dissaver ‘one who does not save money.’

Perhaps as a result of an ecologically motivated decision that smaller is better,

the prefix mini- enjoys maxi use. Among the new combinations into which it has

entered are mini black holes, minicar and minibus, minicam ‘miniature camera,’

the seemingly contradictory miniconglomerate and minimogul, minilecture, mini-

mall, and minirevolution. The form mini, which is a short version of miniature,

came to be used as an independent adjective, and even acquired a comparative

form, as in a New Yorker magazine report, “Fortunately, the curator of ornithology

decided to give another talk, mini-er than the first.” Despite ecological respect for

mini-, the minicinema has given way to the Theater Max, whose second term is a

mini version of mini’s antonym, maxi.

Another voguish affix is non-, from Latin, as in nonsick ‘healthy’ and non-

availability ‘lack.’ Non- has also developed two new uses: first, to indicate a

scornful attitude toward the thing denoted by the main word, as in nonbook

‘book not intended for normal reading, such as a coffee-table art book’; and sec-

ond, to indicate that the person or object denoted by the main word is dissimulat-

ing or has been disguised, as in noncandidate ‘candidate who pretends not to be

running for office.’ Others are -ee, from French, as in hijackee, hiree ‘new

employee,’ mentee ‘person receiving the attention of a mentor,’ returnee ‘returner,’

and trustee; and re-, from Latin, as in re-decontaminate ‘purify again,’ recivilia-

nize ‘return to civilian life,’ and recondition ‘repair, restore.’ The scientific suffix

-on, from Greek, has been widely used in recent years to name newly discovered

substances like interferon in the human bloodstream and posited subatomic parti-

cles like the gluon and the graviton. Perhaps an extension of the -s in disease

names like measles and shingles has supplied the ending of words like dumbs

and smarts, as in “The administration has been stricken with a long-term case of

dumbs” and “He’s got street-smarts” (that is, ‘is knowledgeable about the ways of

life in the streets’).

Another recent suffix is -nik, from Yiddish nudnik, reinforced by Russian sput-

nik. It is often derogatory: beatnik, no-goodnik, peacenik ‘pacifist,’ foundation-nik

‘officer of a foundation,’ and refusednik ‘person denied a visa to enter or leave

Russia.’ Of uncertain origin, but perhaps combining the ending of such Spanish

words as amigo, chicano, and gringo with the English exclamation oh, is an infor-

mal suffix used to make nouns like ammo, cheapo ‘stingy person,’ combo, daddy-o,

kiddo, politico, sicko ‘psychologically unstable person,’ supremo ‘leader,’ weirdo,

wrongo ‘mistake’; adjectives like blotto ‘drunk,’ sleazo ‘sleazy,’ socko and boffo

‘highly successful,’ and stinko; and exclamations like cheerio and righto. Equally

voguish are a number of affixes created by a process of blending: agri-, docu-, e-,

Euro-, petro-, and syn-; -aholic, -ateria, -gate, -rama, and -thon. Such affixes and

the process through which they come into being are discussed below under

“Blending Words.”

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SHORTENING WORDS

Clipped Forms

A clipped form is a shortening of a longer word that sometimes supplants the

latter altogether. Thus, mob supplanted mobile vulgus ‘movable, or fickle, common

people’; and omnibus, in the sense ‘motor vehicle for paying passengers,’ is almost

as archaic as mobile vulgus, having been clipped to bus. The clipping of omnibus,

literally ‘for all,’ is a strange one because bus is merely part of the dative plural

ending -ibus of the Latin pronoun omnis ‘all.’ Periwig, like the form peruke

(Fr. perruque), of which it is a modification, is completely gone; only the abbrevi-

ated wig survives, and few are likely to be aware of the full form. Taxicab has

completely superseded taximeter cabriolet and has, in turn, supplied us with two

new words, taxi and cab. As a shortening of cabriolet, cab is almost a century

older than taxicab. Pantaloons is quite archaic. The clipped form pants has won

the day completely. Bra has similarly replaced brassiere, which in French means a

shoulder strap (derived from bras ‘arm’) or a bodice fitted with such straps.

Other abbreviated forms more commonly used than the longer ones include

phone, zoo, extra, flu, auto, and ad. Zoo is from zoological garden with the pro-

nunciation [zu] from the spelling, a pronunciation now sometimes extended back

to the longer form as [zuǝ-] rather than the traditional [zoǝ-]. Extra, which is prob-

ably a clipping from extraordinary, has become a separate word. Auto, like the full

form automobile, is rapidly losing ground to car, an abbreviated form of motorcar.

In time auto may become archaic. Advertisement became ad in America but was

clipped less drastically to advert in Britain, though ad is now frequent there. Razz,

a clipped form of raspberry ‘Bronx cheer’ used as either noun or verb, is doubtless

more frequent than the full form.

Later clippings of nouns are bio (biography, biographical sketch), fax (facsim-

ile), high tech, perk (perquisite), photo op (photographic opportunity), prenup (pre-

nuptial agreement), soap (soap opera), telecom (telecommunications), and blog,

also a verb (from web-log, perhaps reinterpreted as we-blog from the fact that

some weblogs were communal projects). Clipped adjectives are op-ed ‘pertaining

to the page opposite the editorial page, on which syndicated columns and other

“think pieces” are printed’ and pop, derived from popular, as in “pop culture,”

“pop art,” and “pop sociology.” Hype, used as either a noun ‘advertising, publicity

stunt’ or a verb ‘stimulate artificially, promote,’ is apparently a clipping of hypo,

which, in turn, is a clipping of hypodermic needle, thus reflecting the influence of

the drug subculture on Madison Avenue and hence on the rest of us. Another

clipped verb is rehab, from rehabilitate, as in “Young people are rehabbing a lot

of the old houses in the inner city,” also used as a noun.

As the foregoing examples illustrate, clipping can shorten a form by cutting

between words (soap opera > soap) or between morphemes (biography > bio). But

it often ignores lexical and morphemic boundaries and cuts instead in the middle of

a morpheme (popular > pop, rehabilitate > rehab). In so doing, it creates new mor-

phemes and thus enriches the stock of potential building material for making other

words. In helicopter, the -o- is the combining element between Greek helic- (the

stem of helix, as in the double helix structure of DNA) ‘spiral’ and pter(on) ‘wing,’

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but the word has been reanalyzed as heli-copter rather than as helic-o-pter, thus

producing copter and heliport ‘terminal for helicopters.’

Initialisms: Alphabetisms and Acronyms

An extreme kind of clipping is the use of the initial letters of words (HIV, YMCA),

or sometimes of syllables (TB, TV, PJs ‘pajamas’), as words. Usually the motive for

this clipping is either brevity or catchiness, though sometimes euphemism may be

involved, as with old-fashioned BO, BM, and VD. Perhaps TB also was euphemis-

tic in the beginning, when the disease was a much direr threat to life than it now is

and its very name was uttered in hushed tones. When such initialisms are pro-

nounced with the names of the letters of the alphabet, they are called alphabetisms.

Other examples are CD ‘compact disk’ and HOV ‘high occupancy vehicle’ (of a

highway lane).

One of the oldest English alphabetisms, and by far the most successful one, is

OK. Allen Walker Read traced the history of the form to 1839, showing that it

originated as a clipping of oll korrect, a playful misspelling that was part of a fad

for orthographic jokes and abbreviations. It was then used as a pun on Old

Kinderhook, the nickname of Martin Van Buren during his political campaign of

1840. Efforts to trace the word to more exotic sources—including Finnish, Choctaw,

Burmese, Greek, and more recently African languages—have been unsuccessful but

will doubtless continue to challenge the ingenuity of amateur etymologists.

It is inevitable that it should have dawned on some waggish genius that the ini-

tial letters of words in certain combinations frequently made a pronounceable

sequence of letters. Thus, the abbreviation for the military phrase absent without

official leave, AWOL, came to be pronounced not only as a sequence of the four

letter names, but also as though they were the spelling for an ordinary word, awol

[ˈeˌwɔl]. It was, of course, even better if the initials spelled out an already existing

word, as those of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant spell out Wasp. There had to be a

learned term to designate such words, and acronym was coined from Greek akros

‘tip’ and onyma ‘name,’ by analogy with homonym. There are also mixed examples

in which the two systems of pronunciation are combined—for example, VP ‘Vice

President’ pronounced and sometimes spelled veep and ROTC ‘Reserve Officers

Training Corps’ pronounced like “rotcy.”

The British seem to have beaten Americans to the discovery of the joys of mak-

ing acronyms, even though the impressively learned term to designate what is essen-

tially a letters game was probably born in America. In any case, as early as World

War I days, the Defence [sic, in British spelling] of the Realm Act was called Dora

and members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service were called (with the insertion

of a vowel) Wrens. Wrens inspired the World War II American Wac (Women’s

Army Corps) and a number of others—our happiest being Spar ‘woman Coast

Guard,’ from the motto of the U.S. Coast Guard, Semper Paratus.

The euphemistic fu words—the most widely known is snafu—are also among

the acronymic progeny of World War II. Less well known today are snafu’s humor-

ous comparative, tarfu ‘things are really fouled up,’ and superlative, fubar ‘fouled

up beyond all recognition’ (to use the euphemism to which Webster’s Third New

International Dictionary had recourse in etymologizing snafu as ‘situation normal

all fouled up’). Initialisms are sometimes useful in avoiding taboo terms, the shortest

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and probably best-known example being f-word, on the etymology of whose referent

Allen Walker Read published an early article, “An Obscenity Symbol,” without ever

using the word in question.

The acronymic process has sometimes been reversed or at least conflated; for

example, Waves, which resembles a genuine acronym, most likely preceded or

accompanied the origin of its phony-sounding source, Women Accepted for

Volunteer Emergency Service (in the Navy). That is, to ensure a good match, the cre-

ation of the acronym and the phrase it stands for were simultaneous. The following

are also probably reverse acronyms: JOBS (Job Opportunities in the Business Sector),

NOW (National Organization for Women), and ZIP (Zone Improvement Plan).

Acronyms lend themselves to humorous uses. Bomfog has been coined as a

term for the platitudes and pieties that candidates for public office are wont to

utter; it stands for ‘Brotherhood of Man, Fatherhood of God.’ Yuppie is from

‘young urban professional’ þ -ie. Wysiwyg [ˈwɪziˌwɪg] is a waggish computer term

from ‘What you see is what you get,’ denoting a monitor display that is identical in

appearance with the corresponding printout. Another is gigo for ‘garbage in, gar-

bage out,’ reminding us that what a computer puts out is no better than what we

put in it. The Internet has spawned a massive number of such initialisms used as an

esoteric code among the initiated, such as IM ‘instant messaging,’ imho ‘in my hum-

ble opinion,’ bfn ‘bye for now,’ and lol ‘laughing out loud.’

Other initialisms are used in full seriousness and have become part of the every-

day lives of millions of Americans. For example, people do their IMing (Instant

Messaging) while driving their RVs (recreational vehicles, such as “motor homes”)

or SUVs (sport-utility vehicles). Even more serious is the SWAT (special weapons

and tactics) team or force, deployed in highly dangerous police assignments such

as flushing out snipers. When astronauts first reached the moon, they traveled

across its surface in a lem (lunar excursion module). Other technical acronyms are

radar (radio detecting and ranging) and laser (light amplification by stimulated

emission of radiation). Now we are concerned with alphabetisms like DNA (deox-

yribonucleic acid) and DVD (digital video disc) and with acronyms like NASA

(National Aeronautics and Space Administration), PAC (political action commit-

tee), and DWEM (dead white European male).

Apheretic and Aphetic Forms

A special type of clipping, apheresis (or for the highly learned, aphaeresis), is the

omission of sounds from the beginning of a word, as in childish “’Scuse me” and

“I did it ’cause I wanted to.” Frequently this phenomenon has resulted in two dif-

ferent words—for instance, fender–defender, fence–defense, and sport–disport—in

which the first member of each pair is simply an apheretic form of the second.

The meanings of etiquette and its apheretic form ticket have become rather sharply

differentiated, the primary meaning of French etiquette being preserved in the

English shortening. Sometimes, however, an apheretic form is merely a variant of

the longer form—for instance, possum–opossum and coon–raccoon.

When a single sound is omitted at the beginning of a word and that sound is an

unstressed vowel, we have a special variety of apheresis called aphesis. Aphesis is a

phonological process in that it results from lack of stress on the elided vowel.

Examples are cute–acute, squire–esquire, and lone–alone.

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Back-Formations

Back-formation is the making of a new word from an older word that is mistakenly

assumed to be a derivative of it, as in to burgle from burglar, the final ar of which

suggests that the word is a noun of agency and hence ought to mean ‘one who

burgles.’ The facetious to ush from usher and to buttle from butler are similar.

Pease (an obsolete form of the word pea, as in the “pease porridge” of a nurs-

ery rime) has a final consonant [-z], which is not, as it seems to the ear to be, the

English plural suffix -s; it is, in fact, not a suffix at all but merely the last sound of

the word (OE pise). But by the seventeenth century pease was mistaken for a plural,

and a new singular, pea, was derived from a word that was itself singular, precisely

as if we were to derive a form *chee from cheese under the impression that cheese

was plural; then we should have one chee, two chees, just as we now have one pea,

two peas. Cherry has been derived by an identical process from Anglo-French cher-

ise, the final [s] having been assumed to be the plural suffix. Similarly, sherry wine

was once sherris wine, named for the city in Spain where the wine was originally

made, Xeres (now Jerez). (In Spanish x formerly had the value [š], so the English

spelling was perfectly phonetic.) Similarly, the wonderful one-hoss shay of Oliver

Wendell Holmes’s poem was so called because of the notion that chaise was a plural

form, and the Chinee of a Bret Harte poem is similarly explained.

Other nouns in the singular that look like plural forms are alms (OE ælmysse,

from Lat. eleēmosyna), riches (ME richesse ‘wealth’), and molasses. The first two

are in fact now construed as plurals. Nonstandard those molasses assumes the exis-

tence of a singular that *molass, though such a form is not indeed heard. People

who sell women’s hose, however, sometimes refer to a “very nice hoe,” and sales-

clerks for men’s clothing to “a fine pant” instead of “pair of pants.” When televi-

sion talk-show host Johnny Carson responded to a single handclap with, “That was

a wonderful applaw,” his joke reflected the same tendency in English that leads to

the serious use of kudo as a new singular for kudos, although the latter, a loanword

from Greek, is singular itself.

The adverb darkling ‘in the darkness’ (dark þ adverbial -ling, an Old English

suffix for direction or manner) has been misunderstood as a present participial

form, giving rise to a new verb darkle, as in Lord Byron’s “Her cheek began to

flush, her eyes to sparkle, / And her proud brow’s blue veins to swell and darkle”

(Don Juan), in which darkle means ‘to grow dark.’ Keats had earlier used darkling

with its historical adverbial sense in his “Ode to a Nightingale”: “Darkling I listen;

and, for many a time, / I have been half in love with easeful Death.” This is not to

say that Byron misunderstood Keats’s line; it merely shows how easily the verb

developed as a back-formation from the adverb. Grovel, the first recorded use of

which is by Shakespeare, comes to us by way of a similar misconception of grovel-

ing (grufe ‘face down’ þ -ling), and sidle is likewise from sideling ‘sidelong.’ A jok-

ing use of -ing as a participial ending occurs in J. K. Stephen’s immortal “When the

Rudyards cease from Kipling, / And the Haggards ride no more.” There is a similar

play in “Do you like Kipling?” “I don’t know—I’ve never kippled.”

In some back-formations, the derived form could just as well have been the

original one. Typewriter, of American origin, came before the verb typewrite; never-

theless, the ending -er of typewriter is actually a noun-of-agency ending (early

typewriter referred to either the machine or its operator), so the verb could just as

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well have come first, only it didn’t. It is similar with housekeep from housekeeper (or

housekeeping), baby-sit from baby sitter, and bargain-hunt from bargain hunter. The

adjective housebroken ‘excretorily adapted to the indoors’ is older than the verb

housebreak; but, since housebroken is actually a compounding of house and the

past participle broken, the process might just as well have been the other way

around—but it wasn’t.

BLENDING WORDS

The blending of two existing words to make a new word was doubtless an uncon-

scious process in the oldest periods of our language. Haþel ‘nobleman’ in the

fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is apparently a blend

of aþel (OE æþele ‘noble’) and haleþ (OE hæleþ ‘man’). Other early examples,

with the dates of their earliest occurrence as given in the OED, are flush (flash þ

gush) [1548]; twirl (twist þ whirl) [1598]; dumfound (apparently dumb þ con-

found) [1653]; and flurry (flutter þ hurry) [1698].

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) made a great thing of such blends,

which he called portmanteau words, particularly in his “Jabberwocky” poem. A

portmanteau (from French porter ‘to carry’ þ manteau ‘mantle’) was a term for a

large suitcase with two halves that opened like a book on a center hinge. Carroll

said that blend words are like that: they contain “two meanings packed up into one

word.” Several of his creations—chortle (chuckle þ snort), galumph (gallop þ tri-

umph), and snark (snake þ shark)—have found their way into dictionaries. The

author of Alice through the Looking Glass had an endearing passion for seeing

things backwards, as indicated by his pen name: Carolus is the Latin equivalent of

Charles, and Lutwidge must have suggested to him German Ludwig, the equivalent

of English Lewis. Charles Lutwidge thus became (in reverse) Lewis Carroll.

Among the most successful of blends are smog (smoke þ fog) and motel

(motor þ hotel). Urinalysis (urine þ analysis) first appeared in 1889 and has since

attained to scientific respectability, as have the more recent quasar (quasi þ stellar

[object]) and pulsar (pulse þ quasar). Cafetorium (cafeteria þ auditorium) has

made considerable headway in the American public school systems for a large

room with the double purpose indicated by it. Boy Scouts have camporees (camp þ

jamboree), and a favorite Sunday meal is brunch (breakfast þ lunch). Other recent

blends are e-tail (e- ‘electronic’ þ retail), modem (modulator þ demodulator),

nutraceutical (nutrition þ pharmaceutical), and webisode ‘episode of a TV serial

program broadcast on the World Wide Web.’

Blends are easy to create, which is doubtless why they are so popular and

numerous. Science fiction readers and writers get in touch with one another

through the fanzine (fan þ magazine). Changes in sexual mores have given rise to

palimony (pal þ alimony) for unmarried ex-partners, and sexploitation is the

response of the entertainment industry to freedom of choice.

New Morphemes from Blending

Blending can, and frequently does, create new morphemes or give new meanings to

old ones. For instance, in German Hamburger ‘pertaining to, or associated with,

Hamburg,’ the -er is affixed to the name of the city. This adjectival suffix may be

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joined to any place name in German—for example, Braunschweiger Wurst

‘Brunswick sausage,’ Wiener Schnitzel ‘Vienna cutlet,’ and the like. In English, how-

ever, the word hamburger was blended so often with other words (cheeseburger

being the chief example, but also steak burger, chicken burger, veggie burger, and

a host of others) that burger came to be used as an independent word for a sand-

wich containing some kind of patty. A similar culinary example is the eggwich and

the commercially promoted Spamwich, which have not so far, however, made -wich

into an independent word.

Automobile, taken from French, was originally a combination of Greek autos

‘self’ (also in autohypnosis, autograph, autobiography) and Latin mobilis ‘movable.’

Then automobile was blended to produce new forms like autocar, autobus, and auto-

camp. The result is a new word, auto, with a meaning quite different from that of the

original combining form. One of the new blendings, autocade, has the ending of

cavalcade, which also appears in aquacade, motorcade, and tractorcade, with the

sense of -cade as either ‘pageant’ or ‘procession.’ The second element of automobile

has acquired a combining function as well, as in bookmobile ‘library on wheels’ and

bloodmobile ‘blood bank on wheels.’

Productive new prefixes are e- from electronic, as in e-mail, e-business,

e-commerce, e-ticket (on an airline); eco- from ecology, as in ecofreak, ecosphere,

ecotourism; and bio- from biological, as in biocontrol, bioethics, biotechnology.

Another new morpheme created by blending is -holic ‘addict, one who habitually

does or uses’ whatever the first part of the word denotes, as in credaholic (from

credit), chocoholic (from chocolate), pokerholic, potatochipoholic, punaholic,

sexaholic, sleepaholic, spendaholic, and the most frequent of such trivia, worka-

holic. Yet another is -thon ‘group activity lasting for an extended time and

designed to raise money for a charitable cause,’ the tail end of marathon, whence

the notion of endurance in such charitable affairs as a showerthon (during which

students took turns showering for 360 continuous hours to raise money for the

American Cancer Society), fastathon (in which young people fasted for 30 hours

to raise money for the needy), and cakethon (a five-hour auction of homemade

cakes for the Heart Association), as well as bikeathon, Putt-Putt-athon (from

Putt-Putt ‘commercial miniature golf’), quiltathon, radiothon, teeter-totter-athon,

and wakeathon.

An old morpheme given a new sense by blending is gate. After the forced res-

ignation of Richard Nixon from the presidency, the term Watergate (the name of

the apartment-house and office complex where the events began that led to his

downfall) became a symbol for scandal and corruption, usually involving some

branch of government and often with official efforts to cover up the facts. In

that sense the word was blended with a variety of other terms to produce such

new words as Info-gate, Irangate (also called Armsgate, Contragate, Northgate,

and Reagangate, both the latter after the two principal persons involved in it),

Koreagate, Oilgate, Peanutgate, and many another. Although use of -gate began

as a topical allusion, the formative shows remarkable staying power. New words

made with it continue to appear; for example, Buckinghamgate (news leaks from

the royal palace) and papergate (the writing of bad checks by members of

Congress).

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Folk Etymology

Folk etymology—the naive misunderstanding of a more or less esoteric word that

makes it into something more familiar and hence seems to give it a new etymology,

false though it be—is a minor kind of blending. Spanish cucaracha ‘wood louse’ has

thus been modified to cockroach, though the justly unpopular creature so named is

neither a cock nor a roach in the earlier sense of the word (that is, a freshwater

fish). By the clipping of the term to its second element, roach has come to mean

what cucaracha originally meant.

A neat example of how the folk-etymological process works is furnished by

the experience of a German teacher of ballet who attended classes in modern

dance at an American university in order to observe American teaching tech-

niques. During one of these classes, she heard a student describe a certain ballet

jump, which he referred to as a “soda box.” Genuinely mystified, she inquired

about the term. The student who had used it and other members of the class

averred that it was precisely what they always said and that it was spelled as

they pronounced it—soda box. What they had misheard from their instructor

was the practically universal ballet term saut de basque ‘Basque leap.’ One cannot

but wonder how widespread the folk-etymologized term is in American schools of

the dance.

A classified advertisement in a college town newspaper read in part “Stove,

table & chairs, bed and Chester drawers.” The last named item of furniture is

what is more conventionally called a chest of drawers, but the pronunciation of

that term in fast tempo has led many a hearer to think of it as named for an other-

wise unknown person. Children are especially prone to such folk-etymologizing. As

a child, one of the original authors of this book misheard artificial snow as Archie

Fisher snow, a plausible enough boner because a prominent merchant of the town

was named Archie Fisher and used the stuff in his display windows at Christmas.

Similarly, the present author as a child traveled on a rickety old streetcar to Creve

Coeur (“heartbreak”) Lake in the countryside and, because the trolley going there

made such squeaking noises, he thought the destination was “Creak Car Lake.”

Many people can recall such errors from their childhood.

When this sort of misunderstanding of a word becomes widespread, we have

acquired a new item in the English lexicon—one that usually completely displaces

the old one and frequently seems far more appropriate than the displaced word.

Thus crayfish seems more fitting than would the normal modern phonetic devel-

opment of its source, Middle English crevice, taken from Old French, which lan-

guage in turn took it from Old High German krebiz ‘crab’ (Modern Krebs).

Chaise lounge for chaise longue ‘long chair’ is listed as a variant in Webster’s

Third, and seems to be on the way to full social respectability. A dealer says that

the prevailing pronunciation, of both buyers and sellers, is either [šɛz laʊnǰ] or

[čes laʊnǰ], the first of these in some circles being considered somewhat elite, not

to say snobbish, in that it indicates that the user has “had” French. In any case, as

far as speakers of English are concerned, the boner is remarkably apt, as indeed

are many folk-etymologies. The aptness of a blunder has much to do with its

ultimate acceptance.

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SHIFTING WORDS TO NEW USES

One Part of Speech to Another

A very prolific source of new words is the facility of Modern English, because of its

paucity of inflection, for converting words from one grammatical function to

another with no change in form, a process known as functional shift. Thus, the

name of practically every part of the body has been converted to use as a verb—

one may head a committee, shoulder or elbow one’s way through a crowd, hand

in one’s papers, finger one’s collar, thumb a ride, back one’s car, leg it along, shin

up a tree, foot a bill, toe a mark, and tiptoe through the tulips—without any modi-

fication of form such as would be necessary in other languages, such as German, in

which the suffix -(e)n is a necessary part of all infinitives. It would not have been

possible to shift words thus in Old English times either, when infinitives ended in

-(a)n or -ian. But Modern English does it with the greatest ease; to cite a few non-

anatomical examples, to contact, to chair (a meeting), to telephone, to date, to

impact, to park, to proposition, and to M.C. (or emcee).

Verbs may also be used as nouns. One may, for instance, take a walk, a run, a

drive, a spin, a cut, a stand, a break, a turn, or a look. A newer example is wrap

‘a sandwich made of a soft tortilla rolled around a filling.’ Nouns are just as freely

used as modifiers: head bookkeeper, handlebar mustache, stone wall, and designer

label, whence designer water ‘bottled water.’ Adjectives and participles are used as

nouns—for instance, commercial ‘sales spiel on TV or radio,’ formals ‘evening

clothes,’ clericals ‘clergyman’s street costume,’ devotional ‘short prayer service sub-

sidiary to some other activity,’ private ‘noncommissioned soldier,’ elder, painting,

and earnings.

Adjectives may also be converted into verbs, as with better, round, tame, and

rough. Even adverbs and conjunctions are capable of conversion, as in “the whys

and the wherefores,” “but me no buts” (with but as verb and noun), and “ins and

outs.” The attributive use of in and out, as in inpatient and outpatient, is quite old.

The adjectival use of in meaning ‘fashionable’ or ‘influential,’ as in “the in thing”

and “the in group,” is recent, however. The adjectival use of the adverb now mean-

ing ‘of the present time,’ as in “the now king,” dates from the fifteenth century,

whereas the meaning ‘modern, and hence fashionable,’ as in “the now generation,”

is a product of more recent times.

Transitive verbs may be made from older intransitive ones, as has happened

fairly recently with shop (“Shop Our Fabulous Sale Now in Progress”), sleep

(“Her [a cruising yacht’s] designer has claimed that she can sleep six”), and look

(“What are we looking here?”).

A good many combinations of verbs and adverbs—for instance, slow down,

check up, fill in ‘furnish with a background sketch,’ break down ‘analyze,’ and set

up—are easily convertible into nouns, though usually with shifted stress, as in to

check úp contrasted with a chéckup. Some such combinations are also used as

adjectives, as in sit-down strike, sit-in demonstration, and drive-through teller.

As with the verb-adverb combinations, a shift of stress is sometimes involved

when verbs, adjectives, and nouns shift functions—compare upsét (verb) and úpset

(noun), prodúce (verb) and próduce (noun), pérfect (adjective) and perféct

(verb). Not all speakers make the functional stress distinction in words like ally

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243

and address, but many do. Some words whose functions used to be distinguished by

shift of stress seem to be losing the distinction. Perfume as a noun is now often

stressed on the second syllable, and a building contractor regularly cóntràcts to

build a house.

Common Words from Proper Names

A large number of common words have come to us from proper names—a kind of

functional shift known as commonization. The term eponym is somewhat confus-

ingly applied either to the word derived from a proper name or to the person who

originally bore the name. From names of such eponymous persons, three well-

known eponyms are lynch, boycott, and sandwich. Lynch (by way of Lynch’s

law) is from the Virginian William Lynch (1742–1820), who led a campaign of

“corporeal punishment” against those “unlawful and abandoned wretches” who

were harassing the good people of Pittsylvania County, such as “to us shall seem

adequate to the crime committed or the damage sustained” (Dictionary of

Americanisms). Boycott is from Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832–97), who,

because as a land agent he refused to accept rents at figures fixed by the tenants,

was the best-known victim of the policy of ostracizing by the Irish Land League.

Sandwich is from the fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718–92), said to have spent

twenty-four hours at the gaming table with no other refreshment than slices of

meat between slices of bread.

The following words are also the unchanged names of actual people: ampere,

bowie (knife), cardigan, chesterfield (overcoat or sofa), davenport, derby, derrick,

derringer, graham (flour), guy, lavaliere, macintosh, maverick, ohm, pompadour,

Pullman, shrapnel, solon (legislator), valentine, vandyke (beard or collar), watt,

and zeppelin. Bloomer, usually in the plural, is from Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer

(1818–94), who publicized the garb; one could devise no more appropriate name

for voluminous drawers than this surname. Bobby ‘British policeman’ is from the

pet form of the name of Sir Robert Peel, who made certain reforms in the London

police system. Maudlin, long an English spelling for Old French Madelaine, is ulti-

mately from Latin Magdalen, that is, Mary Magdalene, whom painters frequently

represented as tearfully melancholic.

Comparatively slight spelling modifications occur in dunce (from John Duns

Scotus [d. ca. 1308], who was in reality anything but a dunce—to his admirers he

was Doctor Subtilis) and praline (from Maréchal Duplessis-Praslin [d. 1675]).

Tawdry is a clipped form of Saint Audrey and first referred to the lace bought at

St. Audrey’s Fair in Ely. Epicure is an anglicized form of Epicurus. Kaiser and

czar are from Caesar. Volt is a clipped form of the surname of Count Alessandro

Volta (d. 1827), and farad is derived likewise from the name of Michael Faraday

(d. 1867). The name of an early American politician, Elbridge Gerry, is blended

with salamander in the coinage gerrymander. Pantaloon, in the plural an old-

fashioned name for trousers, is only a slight modification of French pantalon,

which, in turn, is from Italian Pantalone, the name of a silly senile Venetian of

early Italian comedy who wore such nether coverings.

The following are derivatives of other personal names: begonia, bougainvillea,

bowdlerize, camellia, chauvinism, comstockery, dahlia, jeremiad, masochism,

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mesmerism, nicotine, onanism, pasteurize, platonic, poinsettia, sadism, spoonerism,

wisteria, zinnia. Derivatives of the names of two writers—Machiavellian and

Rabelaisian—are of such wide application that capitalizing them hardly seems nec-

essary, any more than platonic.

The names of the following persons in literature and mythology (if gods, god-

desses, and muses may be considered persons) are used unchanged: atlas, babbitt, cal-

liope, hector, hermaphrodite, mentor, mercury, nemesis, pander, psyche, simon-pure,

volcano. Benedick, the name of Shakespeare’s bachelor par excellence who finally

succumbed to the charms of Beatrice, has undergone only very slight modification in

benedict ‘(newly) married man.’ Don Juan, Lothario, Lady Bountiful, Mrs. Grundy,

man Friday, and Pollyanna, though written with initial capitals, belong here also.

The following are derivatives of personal names from literature and mythology:

aphrodisiac, bacchanal, herculean, jovial, malapropism, morphine, odyssey, panic,

quixotic, saturnine, simony, stentorian, tantalize, terpsichorean, venereal, vulcanize.

Despite their capitals, Gargantuan and Pickwickian belong here as well.

Some male given names are used generically: billy (in billycock, hillbilly, silly

billy, and alone as the name of a policeman’s club), tom(my) (in tomcat, tomtit,

tomboy, tommyrot, tomfool), john ‘toilet’ (compare older jakes), johnny (in stage-

door Johnny, johnny-on-the-spot, and perhaps johnnycake, though this may come

from American Indian jonikin ‘type of griddlecake’ þ cake), jack (in jackass, cheap-

jack, steeplejack, lumberjack, jack-in-the-box, jack-of-all-trades, and alone as the

name of a small metal piece used in a children’s game known as jacks), rube (from

Reuben), hick (from Richard), and toby ‘jug’ (from Tobias).

Place names have also furnished a good many common words. The follow-

ing, the last of which exists only in the mind, are unchanged in form: arras, babel,

bourbon, billingsgate, blarney, buncombe, champagne, cheddar, china, cologne,

grubstreet, guinea, homburg (hat), java ‘coffee,’ limerick, mackinaw, Madeira,

madras, magnesia, meander, morocco, oxford (shoe or basket-weave cotton

shirting), panama, sauterne, shanghai, shantung, suede (French name of Sweden),

tabasco, turkey, tuxedo, and utopia.

The following are either derivatives of place names or place names that have

different forms from those known to us today: bayonet, bedlam, calico, canter,

cashmere, copper, damascene, damask, damson, denim, frankfurter, gauze, ham-

burger, italic, jeans (pants), laconic, limousine, mayonnaise, milliner, roman (type),

romance, sardonic, sherry (see above), sodomy, spaniel, spartan, stogy, stygian,

wiener, worsted. Damascene, damask, and damson all three come from

Damascus. Canter is a clipping of Canterbury (gallop), the easygoing pace of

pilgrims to the tomb of St. Thomas à Becket in Canterbury, the most famous and

certainly the “realest” of whom are a group of people who never lived at all except

in the poetic imagination of Geoffrey Chaucer and everlastingly in the hearts and

minds of those who know his Canterbury Tales.

Some commercial products become so successful that their brand or trade

names achieve widespread use and may pass into common use; e.g., escalator and

zipper. Others maintain their trademark status and so are properly (that is, legally)

entitled to capitalization: Band-Aid, Ping-Pong, and Scotch tape. Sometimes a trade

name enters common use through a verb derived from it. In England to hoover is

new words from old

245

‘to clean with a vacuum cleaner’ from the name of a famous manufacturer of such

vacuums. To photocopy is sometimes called to xerox, and a new verb for ‘to search

for information on the Internet’ is to google. Verbs are not subject to trademarking,

though dictionaries are careful to indicate their proper source.

SOURCES OF NEW WORDS

In most cases, we do not know the exact circumstances under which a new word

was invented, but there are a few notable exceptions.

Two literary examples are Catch-22, from the novel of the same name by

Joseph Heller, and 1984, also from a novel of the same name by George Orwell.

Catch-22 denotes a dilemma in which each alternative is blocked by the other. In

the novel, the only way for a combat pilot to get a transfer out of the war zone is

to ask for one on the ground that he is insane, but anyone who seeks to be trans-

ferred is clearly sane, since only an insane person would want to stay in combat.

The rules provide for a transfer, but Catch-22 prevents one from ever getting it.

Orwell’s dystopian novel is set in the year 1984, and its title has come to denote

the kind of society the novel depicts—one in which individual freedom has been

lost, people are manipulated through cynical television propaganda by the govern-

ment, and life is a gray and hopeless affair.

Another literary contribution that has come into the language less directly is

quark. As used in theoretical physics, the term denotes a hypothetical particle, the

fundamental building block of all matter, originally thought to be of three kinds.

The theory of these threefold fundamental particles was developed by a Nobel

Prize winner, Murray Gell-Mann, of the California Institute of Technology; he

called them quarks and then discovered the word in James Joyce’s novel Finnegans

Wake in the phrase “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” Doubtless Gell-Mann had

seen the word in his earlier readings of the novel, and it had stuck in the back of

his mind until he needed a term for his new particles. It is not often that we know

so much about the origin of a word in English.

Distribution of New Words

Which of the various kinds of word making are the most prolific sources of new

words today? One study of new words over the fifty-year period 1941–1991

(Algeo and Algeo, Fifty Years 14) found that the percentages of new words were

as follows for the major types:

Type

Percent

Compounding

40

Affixation

28

Shifting

17

Shortening

8

Blending

5

Borrowing

2

Creating

below 0.5

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Other studies have found variable percentages among the types, but there is

considerable agreement that nowadays English forms most of its new words by

combining morphemes already in the language. Compounding and affixation

account for two-thirds of our new words. Most of the others are the result of put-

ting old words to new uses or shortening or blending them. Loanwords borrowed

from other languages (considered in the next chapter), although once a frequent

source of new words, is of relatively minor importance today. And almost no

words are made from scratch.

FOR FURTHER READING

General

Algeo and Algeo. Fifty Years among the New Words.

Ayto. Twentieth Century Words.

Bauer. English Word-formation.

Cannon. Historical Change and English Word-Formation.

Fischer. Lexical Change in Present-Day English.

Hughes. A History of English Words.

Metcalf. Predicting New Words.

Word Formation

Acronyms, Initialisms, & Abbreviations Dictionary.

Adams. Complex Words in English.

Freeman. A New Dictionary of Eponyms.

Slang

Allen. The City in Slang: New York.

Farmer and Henley. Dictionary of Slang and Its Analogues.

Lighter. Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

Partridge. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.

Special Vocabularies

Allen. Unkind Words: Ethnic Labeling.

Friedman. A “Brand” New Language.

Poteet and Poteet. Car & Motorcycle Slang.

±±±±±±

Foreign Elements in ±±±±±±

12

± C H A P T E R

±±±±

the English Word

±

Stock

Great Britain, settled early by an unknown people, underwent waves of invasion by

Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Norman French, each contributing to the

life and language of the islands. Similarly, the American population, although basi-

cally British in origin, is a combination of genes, cultures, and speechways. Then, as

English has spread over the world, it has continuously influenced and been influ-

enced by the world’s other languages. The result is that our vocabulary, like our

culture, is mongrelized.

Some people think of mixtures as degenerative. Amy Chua, a law professor at

Yale and herself an instance of cultural mixture, believes they are regenerative. She

argues that the most successful world societies have been pluralistic, inclusive, and

protective of diversity. She points to the Persian Empire under the Achaemenids

from Cyrus the Great to Darius III, the Mughal Empire of India under Akbar the

Great, and the Tang Dynasty of China, among other cultures that succeeded

because they valued and exploited the differences of the peoples they embraced. If

Chua is correct, the mongrelization of English is actually a strength.

So far we have dealt only incidentally with the diverse non-English elements in

the English lexicon. In the present chapter we survey these and consider the circum-

stances—cultural, religious, military, and political—surrounding their adoption into

and absorption by English.

To be sure, the core vocabulary of English is, and has always been, native

English. The words we use to talk about everyday things (earth, tree, stone, sea,

hill, dog, bird, house, land, roof, sun, moon, time), relationships (friend, foe,

mother, father, son, daughter, wife, husband ), and responses and actions (hate,

love, fear, greedy, help, harm, rest, walk, ride, speak), as well as the basic numbers

and directions (one, two, three, ten, top, bottom, north, south, up, down) and

grammatical words (I, you, he, to, for, from, be, have, after, but, and ) are all native

English. Nevertheless, an overwhelming majority of the words in any large dic-

tionary, as well as many we use everyday, either came from other languages or

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were coined from elements of foreign words. So the foreign component in our word

stock is of great importance.

When speakers imitate a word from a foreign language, they are said to borrow

it, and their imitation is called a borrowing or loanword. The history of a loanword

may be quite complex because such words have often passed through a series of

languages before reaching English. For example, chess was borrowed in the four-

teenth century from Middle French esches. The French word had been, in turn, bor-

rowed from Medieval Latin, which got it from Arabic, which had borrowed it from

Persian shāh ‘king.’ The direct or immediate source of chess is Middle French, but

its ultimate source (as far back as we can trace its history) is Persian. Similarly, the

etymon of chess, that is, the word from which it has been derived, is immediately

esches but ultimately shāh. Loanwords have, as it were, a life of their own that

cuts across the boundaries between languages.

Popular and Learned Loanwords

It is useful to make a distinction between popular and learned loanwords. Popular

loanwords are transmitted orally and are part of everyday talk. For the most part

we do not think of them as different from other English words; in fact, most people

who use them are not aware that their origin is foreign. Learned loanwords, on the

other hand, owe their adoption to scholarly, scientific, or literary influences.

Originally learned words may in time become part of the ordinary, popular

vocabulary, as did clerk (OE cleric or clerc from Lat. clēricus or OF clerc). The

Old English meaning, ‘clergyman,’ has survived in British legal usage, which still

designates a priest of the Church of England as a “clerk in holy orders.” But over

time that meaning was generally superseded by others: ‘scholar, secretary, record

keeper, bookkeeper.’ So in the seventeenth century, cleric was borrowed again

from the Latin source as a learned word to denote a clergyman. Clerk continued

its popularization in American English, denoting since the eighteenth century ‘one

who waits on customers in a retail store,’ the equivalent of British shop assistant,

and since the nineteenth century ‘a hotel employee who registers guests.’

The approximate time at which a word was borrowed is often indicated by its

form: thus, as Mary Serjeantson (13) points out, Old English scōl ‘school’ (Lat.

schola, ultimately Greek) is obviously a later borrowing than scrīn ‘shrine’ (Lat.

scrīnium), which must have come into Old English before the change of [sk-] to [š-]

since it has the later sound. At the time when scōl was borrowed, this sound change

no longer applied. Had the word been borrowed earlier, it would have developed

into Modern English *shool.

LATIN AND GREEK LOANWORDS

Latin influence on English can be seen in every period of the language’s history,

though its influence has varied in kind from one period to the next.

Latin Influence in the Germanic Period

Long before English began its separate existence when English speakers had migrated

to the British Isles, those who spoke it as a regional type of Continental Germanic

foreign elements in the english word stock

249

had acquired some Latin words. Unlike most of the later borrowings, early loan-

words are concerned mainly with military affairs, commerce, agriculture, or refine-

ments of living that the Germanic peoples had acquired through a fairly close contact

with the Romans since at least the beginning of the Christian era. Roman merchants

had penetrated into the Germania of those early centuries, Roman farmers had set-

tled in the Rhineland and the valley of the Moselle, and Germanic soldiers had

marched with the Roman legions (Priebsch and Collinson 264–5).

Those early borrowings are still widely shared by our Germanic cousins. Wine

(Lat. vīnum), for instance, is to be found in one form or another in all the Germanic

languages—as wīn in Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon, Wein in Modern

German, wijn in Modern Dutch, vin in Danish and Swedish. The Baltic, Slavic,

and Celtic peoples also acquired the same word from Latin. It was brought to

Britain by English warrior-adventurers in the fifth century. They also knew malt

drinks very well—beer and ale are both Germanic words, and mead ‘fermented

honey’ was known to the Indo-Europeans—but apparently the principle of fermen-

tation of fruit juices was a specialty of the Mediterranean peoples.

There are about 175 early loanwords from Latin (Serjeantson 271–7). Many of

those words have survived into Modern English. They include ancor ‘anchor’ (Lat.

ancora), butere ‘butter’ (Lat. būtyrum), cealc ‘chalk’ (Lat. calx), cēse ‘cheese’ (Lat.

cāseus), cetel ‘kettle’ (Lat. catillus ‘little pot’), cycene ‘kitchen’ (Vul. Lat. cucīna,

var. of coquīna), disc ‘dish’ (Lat. discus), mangere ‘-monger, trader’ (Lat. mangō),

mīl ‘mile’ (Lat. mīlia [passuum] ‘a thousand [paces]’), mynet ‘coin, coinage,’

Modern English mint (Lat. monēta), piper ‘pepper’ (Lat. piper), pund ‘pound’ (Lat.

pondō ‘measure of weight’), sacc ‘sack’ (Lat. saccus), sicol ‘sickle’ (Lat. secula), strǣt

‘paved road, street’ (Lat. [via] strata ‘paved [road]’), and weall ‘wall’ (Lat. vallum).

Cēap ‘marketplace, wares, price’ (Lat. caupo ‘tradesman, innkeeper’) is now

obsolete as a noun except in the idiom on the cheap and proper names such as

Chapman, Cheapside, Eastcheap, and Chepstow. The adjectival and adverbial use

of cheap is of early Modern English origin and is, according to the OED, a short-

ening of good cheap ‘what can be purchased on advantageous terms.’ To cheapen is

likewise of early Modern English origin and used to mean ‘to bargain for, ask the

price of’ as when Defoe’s Moll Flanders went out to “cheapen some laces.”

Since all the early borrowings from Latin were popular loanwords, they have

gone through all phonological developments that occurred subsequent to their adop-

tion in the various Germanic languages. Chalk, dish, and kitchen, for instance, in

their respective initial (ch-), final (-sh), and medial (-tch-) consonants show the Old

English palatalization of k. Kitchen in its Old English form cycene also shows muta-

tion of Vulgar Latin u in the vowel of its stressed syllable. German Küche shows the

same mutation. In cetel ‘kettle’ (by way of West Germanic *katil) an earlier a has

likewise been mutated by i in a following syllable (compare Ger. Kessel). The fact

that none of these early loanwords has been affected by the First Sound Shift

(71–4) indicates that they were borrowed after that shift had been completed.

Latin Words in Old English

Among early English loanwords from Latin, some of which came by way of the

British Celts, are candel ‘candle’ (Lat. candēla), cest ‘chest’ (Lat. cista, later cesta),

crisp ‘curly’ (Lat. crispus), earc ‘ark’ (Lat. arca), mægester ‘master’ (Lat. magister),

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mynster ‘monastery’ (Lat. monastērium), peru ‘pear’ (Lat. pirum), port ‘harbor’

(Lat. portus), sealm ‘psalm’ (Lat. psalmus, from Gr.), and tīgle ‘tile’ (Lat. tēgula).

Ceaster ‘city’ (Lat. castra ‘camp’) survives in the town names Chester, Castor,

Caister and as an element in the names of a good many English places, many of

which were once in fact Roman military stations—for instance, Casterton,

Chesterfield, Exeter (earlier Execestre), Gloucester, Lancaster, Manchester, and

Worcester. The differences in form are mostly dialectal.

Somewhat later borrowings with an English form close to their Latin etyma

were alter ‘altar’ (Lat. altar), (a)postol ‘apostle’ (Lat. apostolus), balsam (Lat. balsa-

mum), circul ‘circle’ (Lat. circulus), comēta ‘comet,’ cristalla ‘crystal’ (Lat. crystal-

lum), dēmon (Lat. daemon), fers ‘verse’ (Lat. versus), mæsse, messe ‘mass’ (Lat.

missa, later messa), martir ‘martyr’ (Lat. martyr), plaster (medical) (Lat. emplas-

trum), and templ ‘temple’ (Lat. templum). Since Latin borrowed freely from

Greek, it is not surprising that some of the loans cited are of Greek origin; examples

(to cite their Modern English forms) include apostle, balsam, comet, crystal, and

demon. This is the merest sampling of Latin loanwords in Old English. Somewhat

more than 500 in all occur in the entire Old English period up to the Conquest.

Serjeantson (277–88) lists, aside from the words from the Continental period, 111

from approximately the years 450 to 650, and 242 from approximately the year

650 to the time of the Norman Conquest. These numbers, of course, are not large

compared with the Latin borrowings in later times, but they are significant.

Many Latin loanwords into Old English, particularly those from the later

period, were never widely used, or even known. Some occur only a single time, or

in only a single manuscript. Many were subsequently lost, some to be reborrowed

at a later period from French or from Classical Latin, often with different meanings.

For instance, our words sign and giant are not from the Old English loanwords

segn and gīgant but are later borrowings from Old French signe and geant. In

addition, a learned and a popular form of the same word might coexist in Old

English—for instance, Latin and Læden, the second of which might also mean

‘any foreign language.’

All these loanwords were usually made to conform to Old English declensional

patterns, though occasionally, in translations from Latin into Old English, Latin case

forms, particularly of proper names, may be retained (for example, “fram Agustō þām

cāsere” in the translation of Bede’s account of the departure of the Romans from

Britain: ‘from Augustus the emperor,’ with the Latin ending -ō in close apposition to

the Old English dative endings in -m and -e). As with earlier borrowings, there came

into being a good many hybrid formations: that is, native endings were affixed to for-

eign words—for example, -isc in mechanisc ‘mechanical,’ -dōm in pāpdōm ‘papacy,’

and -ere in grammaticere ‘grammarian’—and hybrid compounds arose, such as

sealmscop ‘psalmist’ (Lat. psalma and OE scop ‘singer, bard’). Infinitives took the

Old English ending -ian, as in the grammatical term declīnian ‘to decline.’

Latin Words Borrowed in Middle English Times

Many borrowings from Latin occurred during the Middle English period. Frequently

it is impossible to tell whether such words are from French or Latin by their form

alone—for instance, miserable, nature, register, relation, and rubric, which are from

foreign elements in the english word stock

251

French but are close to their original Latin etyma. Depending on its meaning, the

single form port may come from Latin portus ‘harbor,’ French porter ‘to carry,’

Latin porta ‘gate,’ or Portuguese Oporto (that is, o porto ‘the port,’ the city where

port wine came from originally)—not to mention its use for one side of a ship, so

called probably because it is next to the harbor port or place of loading cargo.

In the period between the Norman Conquest and 1500, many Latin words hav-

ing to do with religion appeared in English (some by way of French), among them

collect ‘short prayer,’ dirge, mediator, and Redeemer (first used with reference to

Christ). To these might be added legal terms—for instance, client, conviction, and

subpoena; words having to do with scholastic activities—for instance, folio, library,

scribe, and simile; and words having to do with science—for instance, dissolve,

equal, essence, medicine, mercury, and quadrant. These are only a few out of hun-

dreds of Latin words that were adopted before 1500: a longer list would include

verbs (for example, admit, commit, discuss, seclude) and adjectives (for example,

complete, imaginary, instant, legitimate, obdurate, populous, querulous, strict).

Latin Words Borrowed in Modern English Times

The great period of borrowings from Latin and from Greek by way of Latin is the

Modern English period. The century or so after 1500 saw the introduction of many

words, such as abdomen, area, compensate, data, decorum, delirium, digress, edi-

tor, fictitious, gradual, imitate, janitor, jocose, lapse, medium, notorious, orbit, pen-

insula, quota, resuscitate, series, sinecure, superintendent, transient, ultimate, urban,

urge, and vindicate.

In earlier periods Latin was the language of literature, science, and religion.

Latin was, in fact, freely used in both written and spoken forms by the learned all

over Europe throughout the medieval and early modern periods. Petrarch translated

Boccaccio’s story of the patient Griselda into Latin to ensure that such a highly

moral tale should have a wider circulation than it would have had in Boccaccio’s

Italian, and it was this Latin translation that Chaucer used as the source of his

Clerk’s Tale. More, Bacon, and Milton all wrote in Latin, just as the Venerable

Bede and other learned men had done centuries earlier.

Present-day words are often concocted from Latin morphemes but were un-

known as units to the ancients. The international vocabulary of science draws

heavily on such neo-Latin forms, but so do the vocabularies of other areas of mod-

ern life. Among more recent classical contributions to English (with definitions from

The Third Barnhart Dictionary of New English [Barnhart and Steinmetz]) are circa-

dian ‘functioning or recurring in 24-hour cycles’ (from circā diēm ‘around the day’),

Homo habilis ‘extinct species of man believed to have been the earliest toolmaker’

(literally ‘skillful man’), and Pax Americana ‘peace enforced by American power’

(modeled on Pax Romana). Latin was the first major contributor of loanwords to

English, and it remains one of our most important resources.

Greek Loanwords

Even before the Conquest a number of Greek words had entered English by way of

Latin, in addition to some very early loans that may have come into Germanic

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directly from Greek, such as church. From the Middle English period on, Latin

and French are the immediate sources of most ultimately Greek loanwords—for

instance (from Latin), anemia, anesthesia (in its usual modern sense ‘drug-induced

insensibility’ first used in 1846 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was a physician as

well as a poet), barbarous, dilemma, drama, electric, epoch, history, homonym,

paradox, pharynx, phenomenon, rhapsody, and theory; (from French) allegory,

aristocracy, center, character, chronicle, comedy, cycle, democracy, diet, dragon,

ecstasy, fantasy, harmony, lyre, machine, metaphor, mystery, nymph, oligarchy,

pause, rheum, and tyrant; (from either Latin or French) chaos, enthusiasm, epithet,

rhythm, and zone. Straight from Greek (though some are combinations unknown in

classical times) come acronym, agnostic, anthropoid, autocracy, chlorine, idiosyn-

crasy, kudos, pathos, phone, telegram, and xylophone, among many others.

The richest foreign sources of our present English word stock are Latin, French,

and (ultimately) Greek. Many of the Latin and Greek words were first confined to

erudite language, and some still are; others have passed into the stock of more or

less everyday speech. Although Greek had tremendous prestige as a classical lan-

guage, western Europe had little firsthand knowledge of it until the advent of refu-

gee Greek scholars from Constantinople after the conquest of that city by the Turks

in 1453. Hence, most of the Greek words that appear first in early Modern English

came through Latin.

CELTIC LOANWORDS

Some Celtic loanwords doubtless entered the language during the common Germanic

period. Old English rīce as a noun meaning ‘kingdom’ and as an adjective ‘rich,

powerful’ (cf. Ger. Reich and reich) is of Celtic origin, borrowed before the settle-

ment of the English in Britain. The Celtic origin of a few others (for example, OE

ambeht ‘servant,’ dūn ‘hill, down,’) is likely.

As already pointed out, some of the Latin loans of the period up to approxi-

mately A.D. 650 were acquired by the English indirectly through the Celts. It is

likely that ceaster and -coln, as in Lincoln (Lat. colōnia), were so acquired.

Phonology is not much help to us as far as such words are concerned, since they

underwent the same prehistoric Old English sound changes as the words that the

English brought with them from the Continent.

There are, however, a number of genuinely Celtic words acquired during the

early years of the English settlement. We should not expect to find many, for the

British Celts were a subject people, and a conquering people are unlikely to adopt

many words from those whom they have supplanted. The very insignificant number

of words from American Indian languages that have found a permanent place in

American English strikingly illustrates this fact. The Normans are exceptional in

that they ultimately gave up their own language altogether and became English,

in a way in which the English never became Celts. Probably no more than a dozen

or so Celtic words other than place names were adopted by the English up to the

time of the Conquest. These include bannuc ‘a bit,’ bratt ‘cloak,’ brocc ‘badger,’

cumb ‘combe, valley,’ and torr ‘peak.’ However, just as many American place

names are of Indian origin, so many English place names are of Celtic provenience:

Avon, Carlisle, Cornwall, Devon, Dover, London, Usk, and scores more.

foreign elements in the english word stock

253

In more recent times a few more Celtic words have been introduced into

English. From Irish Gaelic come banshee, blarney, brogue, colleen, galore, lepre-

chaun, shamrock, shillelagh, and tory. From Scots Gaelic come bog, cairn, clan,

loch, plaid, slogan, and whiskey (Gaelic usquebaugh ‘water of life’). From Welsh,

the best known is crag, occurring first in Middle English; others of more recent

introduction include cromlech ‘circle of large stones’ and eisteddfod ‘Welsh

festival.’

SCANDINAVIAN LOANWORDS

Old and Middle English Borrowings

Most of the Scandinavian words in Old English do not actually occur in written

records until the Middle English period, though undoubtedly they were current

long before the beginning of that period. Practically all of the extant documents of

the late Old English period come from the south of England, specifically from

Wessex. Scandinavian words would have been more common in the Danelaw—

Northumbria, East Anglia, and half of Mercia—where Alfred the Great, by force

of arms and diplomacy, had persuaded the Scandinavians to confine themselves.

In the later part of the eleventh century, the Scandinavians became gradually

assimilated to English ways, bringing Scandinavian words with them, although

some Scandinavian words had come in earlier. As we have seen, many Scandinavian

words closely resembled their English cognates; sometimes, indeed, they were so

nearly identical that it is difficult to tell whether a given word was Scandinavian or

English.

If the meanings of obviously related words differed, semantic contamination

might result, as when Old English drēam ‘joy’ acquired the meaning of the related

Scandinavian draumr ‘vision in sleep.’ A similar example is brēad ‘crumb’ (ModE

bread); the usual Old English word for the food made from flour or meal was hlāf

(ModE loaf ) as in “Ūrne gedæghwāmlīcan hlāf syle ūs tō dæg” ‘Our daily bread

give us today.’ Others are blōma ‘lump of metal’ (ModE bloom ‘flower’) and poetic

eorl ‘warrior, noble’ (ModE earl), which acquired the meaning of the related

Scandinavian jarl ‘governor.’ Similarly, the later meanings of dwell (OE dwellan,

dwelian), holm ‘islet’ (same form in Old English), and plow (OE plōg) coincide pre-

cisely with the Scandinavian meanings, though in Old English these words meant,

respectively, ‘to lead astray, hinder,’ ‘ocean,’ and ‘measure of land.’

Late Old English and early Middle English loans from Scandinavian were made

to conform wholly or partly with the English sound and inflectional system. These

include (in modern form) by ‘town, homestead’ (as in bylaw ‘town ordinance’ and

in place names, such as Derby, Grimsby, and Rigsby), carl ‘man’ (cognate with OE

ceorl, the source of churl), fellow, hit (first ‘meet with,’ later ‘strike’), law, ragged

and rag, sly, swain, take (completely displacing nim, from OE niman), thrall, and

want. The Scandinavian provenience of sister is noted in Chapter 5 (84).

A good many words with [sk] are of Scandinavian origin, for, as we have seen,

early Old English [sk], written sc, came to be pronounced [š]. Such words as scathe,

scorch, score, scot ‘tax’ (as in scot-free and scot and lot), scowl, scrape, scrub

‘shrub,’ skill, skin, skirt (compare native shirt), and sky thus show by their initial

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consonant sequence that they entered the language after this change had ceased to

be operative. All are from Scandinavian.

Similarly the [g] and [k] before front vowels in gear, geld ‘castrate,’ gill (of a

fish) and keel, kilt, kindle point to Scandinavian origins for these words because

Old English velar stops in that position became [y] and [č], respectively. The very

common verbs get and give come to us not from Old English gitan and gifan,

which began with [y], but instead from cognate Scandinavian forms without palatali-

zation of [g] in the neighborhood of front vowels. Native forms of these verbs with

[y-] occur throughout the Middle English period side by side with the Scandinavian

forms with [g-], which ultimately supplanted them. Chaucer consistently used yive,

yeve, and preterit yaf.

As a rule the Scandinavian loans involve little more than the substitution of one

word for another, such as window, from vindauga, literally ‘wind-eye,’ replacing

eyethurl, literally ‘eyehole,’ from OE ēagþyrl. Some new words denoted new con-

cepts or things, such as certain Scandinavian legal terms or words for various kinds

of warships with which the Scandinavians acquainted the English. Others only

slightly modified the form of an English word, like sister. More important and

more fundamental is what happened to the Old English pronominal forms of the

third person plural: all the th- forms, as we have seen (121, 132), are of Scandinavian

origin. Of the native forms in h- (100–1), only ’em (ME hem, OE him) survives, and it is

commonly but mistakenly thought of as a reduced form of them.

Modern English Borrowings

A number of Scandinavian words have entered English during the modern period,

among them rug and ski. Skoal (British skol, from Danish skål) has had a recent

alcoholic vogue, though it first appears in English, mainly in Scotland, as early as

1600. The OED reasonably suggests that it may have been introduced through the

visit of James VI of Scotland (afterward James I of England) to Denmark, whither

he journeyed in 1589 to meet his bride. Geyser, rune, saga, and skald are all from

Old Norse, although introduced in the eighteenth century. Smorgasbord entered

English from Swedish in the late nineteenth century. Ombudsman ‘official who

looks into complaints and helps to achieve settlements’ is also from Swedish, but

in the twentieth century.

FRENCH LOANWORDS

Middle English Borrowings

Few loanwords unquestionably of French origin occur in English earlier than 1066.

Some of the earliest are (to cite their Modern English forms) capon, castle, juggler,

and prison.

The Norman Conquest made French the language of the official class in England.

Hence it is not surprising that many words having to do with government and

administration, lay and spiritual, are of French origin: the word government itself,

along with Middle English amynistre, later replaced by the Latin-derived administer

with its derivative administration. Others include attorney, chancellor, country, court,

foreign elements in the english word stock

255

crime (replacing English sin, which thereafter came to designate the proper business

of the Church, though the State has from time to time tried to take it over), (e)state,

judge, jury, mayor, noble, and royal. State is partly an aphetic form from Old French

and partly directly from Latin status. In the religious sphere, loans include clergy,

preach, sacrament, and vestment, among a good many others.

Words designating English titles of nobility except for king, queen, earl, lord,

and lady—namely, prince, duke, marquess, viscount, baron, and their feminine

equivalents—date from the period when England was in the hands of a Norman

French ruling class. Even the earl’s wife is a countess, and the peer immediately

below him in rank is a viscount (that is, ‘vice-count’), indicating that the earl corre-

sponds in rank with the Continental count. In military usage, army, captain, lieu-

tenant (literally ‘place holding’), sergeant (originally a serving man or attendant),

and soldier are all of French origin. Colonel and corporal do not occur in English

until the sixteenth century (the former as coronnel, whence the pronunciation).

French brigade and its derivative brigadier were introduced in the seventeenth cen-

tury. Major as a general adjective is Middle English from Latin, but as a military

noun it is late sixteenth century from French, originally a shortening of sergeant

major, then a commissioned officer and only later a noncommissioned one.

French names were given not only to various animals when served up as food

at Norman tables—beef, mutton, pork, and veal, for instance—but also to the culi-

nary processes by which the English cow, sheep, pig, and calf were prepared for

human consumption, for instance, boil, broil, fry, roast, and stew. Native English

seethe ‘boil, stew’ is now used mostly metaphorically, as in “to seethe with rage”

and “sodden in drink” (sodden being the old past participle). Other French loans

from the Middle English period, chosen more or less at random, are dignity,

enamor, feign, fool, fruit, horrible, letter, literature, magic, male, marvel, mirror,

oppose, question, regard, remember, sacrifice, safe, salary, search, second (replacing

OE ōðer as an ordinal number), secret, seize, sentence, single, sober, and solace.

French words have come into English from two dialects of French: the Norman

spoken in England (Anglo-Norman) and the Central French (that of Paris, later

standard French). We can frequently tell by the form of a word whether it is of

Norman or of Central French provenience. For instance, Latin c [k] before a devel-

oped into ch [č] in Central French, but remained in the Norman dialect; hence

chapter, from Middle English chapitre (from Old French), ultimately going back to

Latin capitulum ‘little head,’ a diminutive of caput, is from the Central dialect.

Compare also the doublets chattel and cattle, from Central French and Norman,

respectively, both going back to Latin capitāle ‘possession, stock.’ Similarly, Old

French w was retained in Norman French, but elsewhere became [gw] and then

[g]: this development is shown in such doublets as wage–gage and warranty–

guarantee (the last perhaps also indebted to Spanish).

Let us pause to examine the opening lines of the Canterbury Tales, written

toward the end of a period of intense borrowing from French. The italicized

words are of French origin:

Whan that Aprille with hise shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

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5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his half[e] cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

10 That slepen al the nyght with open eye—

So priketh hem nature in hir corages—

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And Palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes kowthe in sondry londes

15 And specially fram every shires ende

Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende

The hooly blisful martir for to seke

That hem hath holpen when hat they were seeke.

Bifil that in that seson on a day,

20 In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay

Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage

To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,

At nyght were come in to that hostelrye

Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye

25 Of sondry folk by aventure yfalle

In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle

That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.

[Ellesmere MS]

In these twenty-seven lines there are 189 words. Counting pilgrimage and corage

only once, 24 of these words come from French. Such a percentage is doubtless also

fairly typical of cultivated London usage in Chaucer’s time. According to Serjeantson

(151), between 10 and 15 percent of the words Chaucer used were of French origin.

It will be noted, as has been pointed out before, that the indispensable everyday

words—auxiliary verbs, pronouns, and particles—are of native origin. To the four-

teenth century, as Serjeantson points out (136), we owe most of the large number of

still current abstract terms from French ending with -ance, -ant, -ence, -ent, -ity,

-ment, -tion and those beginning with con-, de-, dis-, ex-, pre-, though some of them

do not actually show up in writing for another century or so.

Later French Loanwords

Borrowing from French has gone on ever since the Middle Ages, though never on

so large a scale. It is interesting to note that the same French word may be bor-

rowed at various periods in the history of English, like gentle (thirteenth century),

genteel (sixteenth century), and jaunty (seventeenth century), all from French gentil.

(Gentile, however, was taken straight from Latin gentīlis, meaning ‘foreign’ in post-

Classical Latin.) It is similar with chief, first occurring in English in the fourteenth

century, and chef, in the nineteenth—the doublets show by their pronunciation the

approximate time of their adoption: the Old French affricate [č] survives in chief, in

which the vowel has undergone the expected Great Vowel Shift from [e:] to [i:];

chef shows the Modern French shift of the affricate to the fricative [š]. In words of

French origin spelled with ch, the pronunciation is usually indicative of the time of

foreign elements in the english word stock

257

adoption: thus chamber, champion, chance, change, chant, charge, chase, chaste,

chattel, check, and choice were borrowed in Middle English times, whereas cham-

ois, chauffeur, chevron, chic, chiffon, chignon, douche, and machine have been

taken over in Modern English times. Since chivalry was widely current in Middle

English, one would expect it to begin in Modern English with [č]; the word has, as

it were, been re-Frenchified, perhaps because with the decay of the institution it

became more of an eye word than an ear word. As late as 1977, Daniel Jones and

A. C. Gimson recorded [č] as current but labeled it old-fashioned. In 1990, John

C. Wells did not record it at all.

Carriage, courage, language, savage, voyage, and village came into English in

Middle English times and have come to have initial stress in accordance with

English patterns. Chaucer and his contemporaries could have it both ways in their

poetry—for instance, either couráge or cóurage, as also with other French loans—

for instance, colour, figure, honour, pitee, valour, and vertu. This variable stress is

still evidenced by such doublets as dívers and divérse. The position of the stress is

frequently evidence of the period of borrowing: compare, for instance, older

cárriage with newer garáge, válour with velóur, or véstige with prestíge.

More recent loans from French are, as we should expect, by and large less

completely naturalized than older ones, though some, like cigarette, picnic, and

police, seem commonplace enough. These later loans also include (omitting French

accents except where they are usual in English) aide-de-camp, amateur, ballet,

baton, beau, bouillon, boulevard, brochure, brunette, bureau, cafe, camouflage,

chaise longue, champagne, chaperon (early, a hood or cap worn by women; later

reborrowed as a married woman who shields a young girl as a hood shields

the face), chi-chi ‘chic gone haywire,’ chiffonier, chute, cliché, commandant,

communiqué, connoisseur, coupe (‘cut off,’ past participle of couper, used of a

closed car with short body and practically always pronounced [kup] in American

English), coupon, crepe, crochet, debris, debut(ante), decor, deluxe, denouement,

detour, elite, embonpoint (compare the loan translation in good point, which

occurs much earlier, as in Chaucer’s description of the Monk in the General

Prologue of the Canterbury Tales: “He was a lord ful fat and in good poynt”),

encore, ensemble, entree, envoy, etiquette, fiancé(e), flair, foyer (British [ˈfɔɪye] or

[ˈfwaye]; American also [ˈfɔɪǝr]), fuselage, genre, glacier, grippe, hangar, hors

d’oeuvre, impasse, invalid, laissez faire, liaison, limousine, lingerie, massage, mati-

nee (earlier, as its derivation from matin implies, a morning performance), melee,

ménage, menu, morale, morgue, naive, negligee, nuance, passé, penchant, plateau,

premiere, protégé, rapport, ration (the traditional pronunciation, riming with fash-

ion, indicates its Modern French origin; the newer one, riming with nation and sta-

tion, is by analogy with those much older words), ravine, repartee, repertoire,

reservoir, restaurant, reveille (British [rɪˈvælɪ]; American [ˈrɛvǝli]), revue, risqué,

roué, rouge, saloon (and its less thoroughly Anglicized variant salon), savant, savoir

faire, souvenir, suede, surveillance, svelte, tête-à-tête, vignette, and vis-à-vis.

There are also a good many loan translations from French, such as marriage of

convenience (mariage de conveyance), that goes without saying (ça va sans dire), and

trial balloon (ballon d’essai). In loan translation, the parts of a foreign expression are

translated, thus producing a new idiom in the native language, as in (to cite another

French example) reason of state from raison d’état. Such forms are a kind of calque.

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The suffix -ville in the names of so many American towns is, of course, of

French origin. Of the American love for it, Matthew Arnold declared: “The mere

nomenclature of the country acts upon a cultivated person like the incessant prick-

ing of pins. What people in whom the sense of beauty and fitness was quick could

have invented, or could tolerate, the hideous names ending in ville, the Briggsvilles,

Higginsvilles, Jacksonvilles, rife from Maine to Florida; the jumble of unnatural and

inappropriate names everywhere?” Chowder, depot ‘railway station,’ levee

‘embankment,’ picayune, prairie, praline, shivaree (charivari), and voyageur are

other Americanisms of French origin.

SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE LOANWORDS

English has taken words from various other European languages as well—through

travel, trade, exploration, and colonization. A good many Spanish and a smaller

number of Portuguese loanwords entered English between the sixteenth and eigh-

teenth centuries, quite a few of which are ultimately non-European, some coming

from the New World. Spanish borrowings include adobe (from Egyptian via

Arabic), alligator (el lagarto ‘the lizard’), anchovy, armada, armadillo (literally ‘little

armed one’), avocado (from Nahuatl ahuacatl), barbecue (probably from Taino),

barracuda, bolero, calaboose (calabozo), cannibal (Sp. Canibal, recorded by

Columbus as a name of the Carib people), cargo, cask, castanet, chili (Br. chilli,

from Nahuatl), chocolate (from Nahuatl), cigar (probably from Maya), cockroach,

cocoa (from Nahuatl), cordovan (leather; an older form, cordwain, comes through

French), corral, desperado, domino ‘cloak or mask,’ embargo, flotilla, frijoles, gal-

leon, guitar, hacienda, junta, key ‘reef’ (cayo), lasso, maize (from Taino), mantilla,

mesa, mescal (from Nahuatl), mesquite (from Nahuatl), mosquito ‘little fly,’

mulatto, negro, palmetto, patio, peccadillo, plaza (ultimately from Latin platēa, as

are also place, which occurs in Old English times, and the Italian loanword piazza),

poncho, potato (from Taino), punctilio (perhaps Italian), sherry, sierra, siesta, silo,

sombrero, stevedore (estivador ‘packer’), tamale (from Nahuatl), tomato (from

Nahuatl), tornado (a blend of tronada ‘thunderstorm’ and tornar ‘to turn’), tortilla,

and vanilla.

A number of words were adopted from Spanish in the nineteenth century, espe-

cially by Americans: bonanza, bronco, buckaroo (vaquero), canyon, chaparral ‘scrub

oak’ (whence chaps, ‘leather pants worn by cowboys as protection against such vege-

tation’), cinch, lariat (la reata ‘the rope’), mustang, pinto, pueblo, ranch, rodeo, stam-

pede (estampida), tango (perhaps ultimately African), and vamoose (vamos ‘let’s go’).

It is likely, as M. M. Mathews (Some Sources of Southernisms 18) points out for

chili, that some of the early Spanish loans were reborrowed by American English in

the nineteenth century—“at the time we began to make first hand acquaintance with

the Spanish speakers on our Southwestern border”—so are not continuations of the

earlier forms.

Twentieth-century borrowings include another food term—frijoles refritos and

its loan translation, refried beans—as well as terms for drinks, such as margarita

and sangria. Chicano and Chicana, macho, and machismo reflect social phenomena.

Hoosegow is from juzgao ‘jail,’ a Mexican Spanish form of juzgado ‘legal court.’

foreign elements in the english word stock

259

Moment of truth ‘critical time for reaching a decision or taking action’ is a transla-

tion of momento de la verdad, which refers to the moment of the kill, when a mata-

dor faces the charging bull; the term was popularized by Hemingway’s Death in the

Afternoon. Persons who use the expression now may be unaware of its origin in

bullfighting.

No words came into English directly from Portuguese until the Modern English

period; those that have been adopted include albino, bossa nova, Madeira (from the

place), molasses, pagoda, palaver, and pickaninny (pequenino ‘very small’), the last

two through African pidgins. There are a few others considerably less familiar.

ITALIAN LOANWORDS

From yet another Romance language, Italian, English has acquired a good many

words, including much of our musical terminology. As early as the sixteenth cen-

tury alto, duo, fugue, madrigal, presto, viola da gamba ‘viol for the leg,’ and violin

appear in English. From the seventeenth century, we have adagio, allegro, largo,

maestro, opera, piano ‘soft’ (as the name of the instrument, a clipped form of

eighteenth-century pianoforte), recitative, solo, sonata, and tempo. In the eighteenth

century, interest in Italian music reached its apogee in England with andante, aria,

cadenza, cantata, concerto, contralto, crescendo, diminuendo, duet, falsetto, finale,

forte ‘loud’ (the identically written word pronounced with final e silent and mean-

ing ‘strong point’ is from French), legato, libretto, obbligato, oratorio, prima donna,

rondo, soprano, staccato, trio, trombone, viola, and violoncello; and in the nine-

teenth, diva, piccolo, pizzicato, and vibrato.

Other loanwords from Italian include artichoke, balcony, balloon, bandit,

bravo, broccoli, canto, carnival, cartoon, casino, cupola, dilettante (frequently

pronounced as if French, by analogy with debutante), firm ‘business association,’

fresco, ghetto, gondola, grotto, incognito, inferno, influenza, lagoon, lava, malaria

(mala aria ‘bad air’), maraschino, miniature, motto, pergola, piazza, portico,

regatta, replica, scope, stanza, stiletto, studio, torso, umbrella, vendetta, and vol-

cano, not to mention those words of ultimate Italian origin, like corridor, gazette,

and porcelain, which came by way of French. An expression of farewell, ciao

[čaʊ], enjoyed a period of great, although brief, popularity in trendy circles. The

term la dolce vita was popularized by an Italian motion picture of that name;

paparazzi are freelance photographers who specialize in candid shots of beautiful

people indulging in la dolce vita. Another kind of influence is attested by Cosa

Nostra and Mafioso, as well as the translation godfather for the head of a crime

syndicate.

Macaroni (Mod. Italian maccheroni) came into English in the seventeenth cen-

tury (its doublet macaroon, though designating quite a different food, is also from

Italian, but by way of French), vermicelli in the seventeenth, and spaghetti and gor-

gonzola (from the town) in the nineteenth. Ravioli (as rafiol) occurs in English in

the fifteenth century, and later as raviol in the seventeenth century. Both forms are

rare; the modern form is a new borrowing in the nineteenth century. Pizza and lasa-

gna are also nineteenth century, and al dente, linguine, manicotti, and scampi are

twentieth-century introductions into English.

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GERMANIC LOANWORDS

Loanwords from Low German

Dutch and other forms of Low German have contributed a number of words to

English, to a large extent via the commercial relationships existing between the

English and the Dutch and Flemish-speaking peoples from the Middle Ages on.

Because the Low German languages are quite similar, it is often difficult to deter-

mine which one was the source of an early loanword.

It is not surprising in view of their eminence in seafaring activities that the

Dutch should have contributed a number of nautical terms: boom ‘spar,’ bowline,

bowsprit, buoy, commodore, cruise, deck (Dutch dec ‘roof,’ then in English ‘roof of

a ship,’ a meaning that later got into Dutch), dock, freight, lighter ‘flat-bottomed

boat,’ rover ‘pirate,’ scow, skipper (schipper ‘shipper,’ that is, ‘master of a ship’),

sloop, smuggle, split (in early use, ‘break a ship on a rock’), taffrail, yacht, and yawl.

The Dutch and the Flemish were also famed for their cloth making. Terms like

cambric, duck (a kind of cloth), duffel or duffle (from the name of a place), nap,

pea jacket, and spool suggest the cloth-making trade, which merchants carried to

England, along with such commercial terms as dollar, groat, guilder, and mart.

England was also involved militarily with Holland, a connection reflected in a num-

ber of loanwords: beleaguer, forlorn hope (a remodeling by folk etymology from

verloren hoop ‘lost troop,’ Dutch hoop being cognate with English heap, as of

men), furlough, kit (originally a vessel for carrying a soldier’s equipment), knap-

sack, onslaught, and tattoo ‘drum signal, military entertainment’ (from an evening

signal that the tavern was closed: Dutch taptoe ‘the tap of the cask is to [= shut]’).

The reputation of the Dutch for eating and especially drinking well is attested

by booze, brandy(wine), gherkin, gin (short for genever—borrowed by the Dutch

from Old French, ultimately Latin juniperus ‘juniper,’ confused in English with the

name of the city Geneva), hop (a plant whose cones are used as a flavoring in malt

liquors), limburger, log(g)y, and pickle. Perhaps as a result of indulgence in such

Dutch pleasures, we have frolic (vrolijk ‘joyful,’ cognate with German fröhlich)

and rant (earlier ‘be boisterously merry’).

Dutch painting was also valued in England, and consequently we have as loan-

words easel, etch, landscape (the last element of which has given rise to a large

number of derivatives, including recently moonscape and earthscape as space travel

has allowed us to take a larger view of our surroundings), maulstick, and sketch.

Miscellaneous loans from Low German include boor (boer), gimp, hanker, isin-

glass (a folk-etymologized form of huysenblas), luck, plunder, skate (Dutch schaats,

with the final -s mistaken for a plural ending), snap, wagon (the related OE wægn

gives modern wain), and wiseacre (Middle Dutch wijsseggher ‘soothsayer’). From

South African Dutch (Afrikaans) have come apartheid, commandeer, commando,

kraal (borrowed by Dutch from Portuguese and related to the Spanish loanword

corral), spoor, trek, and veld(t).

A number of loanwords have entered English through the contact of Americans

with Dutch settlers, especially in the New York area. There are Dutch-American

food terms like coleslaw (koolsla ‘cabbage salad’), cookie, cranberry, cruller, pit

‘fruit stone,’ and waffle. The diversity of other loanwords reflects the variety of

foreign elements in the english word stock

261

cultural contacts English and Dutch speakers had in the New World: boodle, boss,

bowery, caboose, dope, Santa Claus (Sante Klaas ‘Saint Nicholas’), sleigh, snoop,

spook, and stoop ‘small porch.’

Loanwords from High German

High German has had comparatively little impact on English. Much of the vernac-

ular of geology and mineralogy is of German origin—for instance, cobalt, feldspar

(a half-translation of Feldspath), gneiss, loess, meerschaum, nickel (1755, origi-

nally Kupfernickel, ‘copper demon,’ so called because the ore was copper-colored

but yielded no copper), quartz, seltzer (ultimately a derivative of Selters, near

Wiesbaden), and zinc. Carouse occurs in English as early as the sixteenth century,

from the German gar aus ‘all out,’ meaning the same as bottoms up. Originally

adverbial, it almost immediately came to be used as a verb, and shortly afterward

as a noun.

Other words taken from German include such culinary terms as bratwurst,

braunschweiger, delicatessen, knockwurst (or knackwurst), noodle (Nudel), pret-

zel, pumpernickel, sauerbraten, sauerkraut (occurring first in British English, but

the English never cared particularly for the dish, and the word may to all intents

and purposes be considered an Americanism, independently reborrowed), schnit-

zel, wienerwurst, and zwieback. Liederkranz is an American type of limburger

cheese, apparently called after a New York German singing society whose

name meant ‘Wreath of Song.’ Liverwurst is a half-translation of Leberwurst.

Hamburger, frankfurter, and wiener (from wienerwurst) are doubtless the most

popular of all German loans (although now the first is usually abbreviated to bur-

ger, and the latter two have been supplanted by hot dog). The vernacular of

drinking includes bock (from Einbecker Bier ‘beer of Einbeck,’ shortened in

German to Bockbier, a strong brew with a name that puns on Bock ‘billy goat’

perhaps because of its kick), katzenjammer ‘hangover’ (literally ‘cat lament’),

kirsch(wasser), lager, and schnapps.

Other words from German include angst, hamster, landau (from the place of

that name), waltz, and the dog names dachshund, Doberman(n) pinscher, poodle

(Pudel), and spitz. We also have edelweiss, ersatz, hinterland, leitmotiv, poltergeist,

rucksack, schottische, wunderkind, yodel (jodeln), and the not yet thoroughly natu-

ralized Doppelgänger, gemütlich, Gestalt, Schadenfreude, Sitzfleisch ‘perseverance,’

Weltanschauung and its loan translation worldview, and Zeitgeist. Ablaut, umlaut,

and schwa (ultimately Hebrew) have been used as technical terms in this book.

Blitz(krieg) had an infamous success in 1940 and 1941, but it has since receded,

although blitz has reincarnated with other metaphorical uses.

Seminar and semester are, of course, ultimately Latin, but they entered Amer-

ican English by way of German. Seminar is probably an independent borrowing

in both British and American about the same time, the late nineteenth century,

when many American and English scholars went to Germany in pursuit of their

doctorates. Semester is known in England, but the English have little use for it save

in reference to foreign universities. Academic freedom is a loan translation of

akademische Freiheit. Bummeln is used by German students to mean ‘to loiter, waste

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time,’ and it may be the source of American English to bum and the noun in the sense

‘loafer,’ though this need not be an academic importation.

On a less elevated level, American English uses such expressions as (on the)

fritz, gesundheit (when someone has sneezed), hex, kaffeeklatsch and its angliciza-

tion as coffee clutch, kaput, and nix (nichts). German-Americans have doubtless

been responsible for adapting the German suffix -fest to English uses, as in songfest

and gabfest. Biergarten has undergone translation in beer garden; kindergarten is

frequently pronounced as though the last element were English garden. By way of

the Germans from the Palatinate who settled in southern Pennsylvania in the early

part of the eighteenth century come a number of terms of German origin little

known in other parts of the United States, such as smearcase ‘cottage cheese’

(Schmierkäse), snits ‘fruit cut for drying,’ and sots ‘yeast.’ Kriss Kingle or Kriss

Kringle (Christkindl ‘Christ child’) and to dunk have become nationally known.

Yiddish (that is, Jüdisch ‘Jewish’) has been responsible for introducing a num-

ber of originally German or Hebrew words, among them kibitz, schlemiel,

schmaltz, schnozzle, shmo, shnook, shtick, and others less widely known to non-

Jews. Other contributions of Yiddish are chutzpah, klutz, kvetch, mavin, mensch,

nebbish, nosh, schlep, schlock, schmear, yenta, and zoftig—distinctly ethnic in

tone, although several have become characteristic of New York. Some Yiddishisms

are indelicate: tokus ‘buttocks’ (from a Hebrew word meaning ‘beneath’) and

fakakta or verkakte ‘beshitted, hence useless, stupid, crazy.’ The suffix -nik, ulti-

mately of Slavic origin and popularized by the Soviet sputnik, has also been dissem-

inated by Yiddish through such forms as nudnik; it has been extended to forms like

beatnik, filmnik, neatnik, no-goodnik, and peacenik.

LOANWORDS FROM THE EAST

Near East

As early as Old English times, words from the East doubtless trickled into the lan-

guage, then always by way of other languages. A number of words ultimately

Arabic, most of them having to do in one way or another with science or with com-

merce, came in during the Middle English period, usually by way of French or Latin.

These include amber, camphor, cipher (from Arabic ṣifr by way of Medieval Latin;

the Italian modification of the same Arabic word as zero entered English in the

early Modern period), cotton, lute, mattress, orange, saffron, sugar, syrup, and

zenith.

The Arabic definite article al is retained in one form or another in alchemy,

alembic, algorism, alkali, almanac, azimuth (as [for al] plus sumūt ‘the ways’), elixir

(el [for al] plus iksīr ‘the philosopher’s stone’), and hazard (az [for al] plus zahr ‘the

die’). In admiral, occurring first in Middle English, the Arabic article occurs in the

final syllable: the word is an abbreviation of some such phrase as amīr-al-bah.r

‘commander (of) the sea.’ Through confusion with Latin admīrābilis ‘admirable,’

the word has acquired a d; d-less forms occur, however, as late as the sixteenth

century, though ultimately the blunder with d, which occurs in the first known

recording of the word—in Layamon’s Brut, written around the end of the twelfth

century—was to prevail.

foreign elements in the english word stock

263

Alcohol (al-kuh.l ‘the kohl, that is, powder of antimony for staining the eyelids’)

developed its modern meaning by generalization to ‘powder’ of any kind, then

to ‘essence’ or ‘spirit’ as in obsolete alcohol of wine, and thence to the spirituous

element in beverages. Alcove and algebra, also beginning with the article, were intro-

duced in early Modern times, along with a good many words without the article—for

instance, assassin (originally ‘hashish eater’), caliber, carat, caraway, fakir, garble,

giraffe, harem, hashish, henna, jinn (plural of jinnī), lemon, magazine (ultimately an

Arabic plural form meaning ‘storehouses’), minaret, mohair, sherbet, and tariff. Some

of these were transmitted through Italian, French, or other languages; very few were

taken directly from Arabic. Coffee, ultimately Arabic, was taken into English by way

of Turkish and probably Dutch.

Other Semitic languages have contributed little directly, though a number of

words ultimately Hebrew have come to us by way of French or Latin. Regardless

of the method of their transmission, Hebrew is the ultimate or immediate origin of

amen, behemoth, cabala or Kabbalah (via medieval Latin from Rabbinical Heb.

qabbālāh ‘received [lore],’ whence also, by way of French, cabal), cherub, hallelu-

jah, jubilee, rabbi, Sabbath, seraph, shekel, and shibboleth. Both Jehovah (Yahweh)

and Satan are Hebrew. Yiddish uses a very large number of Hebrew words and

seems to have been the medium of transmission for goy, kosher, matzo (plural mat-

zoth), and mazuma.

Iran and India

Persian and Sanskrit are both Indo-European; yet the regions in which they were

spoken were far removed from England, and they were to all intents and purposes

highly exotic. Consequently, such words as Persian caravan (in the nineteenth century

clipped to van) and bazaar must have seemed exotic to the English in the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries, when they first became current. Azure, musk, paradise,

satrap, and taffeta occur in Middle English. None of these are direct loans, coming

rather through Latin or Old French.

In addition, some Persian words were borrowed in India. Cummerbund ‘loin-

band’ first appears (as combarband) in the early seventeenth century, and is now

used for an article of men’s semiformal evening dress frequently replacing the low-

cut waistcoat. Seersucker is an Indian modification of Persian shīr o shakkar ‘milk

and sugar,’ the name of a fabric. Khaki ‘dusty, cloth of that color,’ recorded in

English first in 1857 but not widely known in America until much later, was at

first pronounced [ˈkɑki], though [ˈkæki] is normal nowadays.

Also from Persian come baksheesh, dervish, mogul, shah, and shawl. Chess, as

noted earlier, comes directly from Middle French esches (the plural of eschec) with

loss of its first syllable by aphesis, but the word is ultimately Persian, as is the cog-

nate check (in all its senses) from the Middle French singular eschec. The words go

back to Persian shāh ‘king,’ which was taken into Arabic in the specific sense ‘the

king in the game of chess,’ whence shāh māt ‘the king is dead,’ the source of check-

mate. The derivative exchequer (OF eschequier ‘chess board’) came about through

the fact that accounts used to be reckoned on a table marked with squares like a

chess (or checker) board. Rook ‘castle, chess piece’ is also ultimately derived from

Persian.

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From Sanskrit come, along with a few others, avatar, chakra, guru, karma,

mahatma, mantra, swastika, and yoga (‘union,’ akin to English yoke). Swastika, a

sacred symbol in several Indian religions, whose root meaning is ‘well-being,’ is

often thought of as a symbol of the Nazi party in Germany because they adopted

the shape for their own purposes. The term was actually little known in that coun-

try, where the name of the figure was Hakenkreuz ‘hook-cross.’ Swastika first

occurs in English in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Sanskrit dvandva, sandhi,

and svarabhakti are pretty much confined to the vernacular of linguistics; nonlinguists

get along without them very well.

Candy is ultimately from Sanskrit khanda ‘piece, fragment’ but passed through

Persian to Arabic sukkar qandī ‘sugar piece, candied sugar’ and thence through Old

French sucre candi into Middle English as sugar candy and was reduced to simple

candy by the seventeenth century. Ginger, which occurs in Old English (gingifere),

is ultimately from Dravidian via Pali, Greek, Latin, and French. From Indic lan-

guages also come bandanna, bangle, bungalow, chintz, cot, dinghy, dungaree, gunny

‘sacking,’ juggernaut, jungle, loot, maharaja (and maharani), nabob, pajamas, pundit,

sahib, sari, shampoo, swami, thug, and tom-tom, along with a number of other

words that are much better known in England than in America (for instance, babu,

durbar, and pukka). Pal is from Romany, or Gypsy, which is an Indic dialect. A

good many Indic words have achieved general currency in English because of their

use by literary men, especially Kipling, though he had distinguished predecessors,

including Scott, Byron, and Thackeray.

The non-Indo-European languages, called Dravidian, spoken in southern India

have contributed such fairly well-known words as catamaran, copra, curry, mango,

pariah, and teak, some through European languages.

Far East and Australasia

Other English words from languages spoken in the Orient are comparatively few in

number, but some are quite well known. Silk fiber came from China, but the origin

of the word silk (Old English sioloc or seol(e)c) is unknown. From various dialects

of Chinese come ch’i-kung (or qigong), feng shui, foo yong, ginseng, gung-ho,

I-Ching, ketchup, kowtow, kumquat, kung fu, litchi, pongee, t’ai chi ch’uan, tea

(and its informal British variant char), wok, wonton, and yin-yang. Typhoon is a

remodeling based on a Chinese word meaning ‘big wind’ of an earlier form with

roots in Portuguese, Urdu, Arabic, and ultimately Greek, being a word with a very

mixed ancestry. Americanisms of Chinese origin are chop suey, chow, chow mein,

and tong ‘secret society.’

From Japanese have come aikido, anime ‘cartoon film,’ banzai, geisha, ginkgo,

go ‘a board game,’ Godzilla, hanafuda (literally ‘flower cards,’ playing cards used

in various games), hara-kiri, haiku, (jin)ricksha, karaoke, karate, kimono, manga

‘comic-book graphic novel,’ miso, Pac-Man, Pokemon, sake ‘liquor,’ samurai, soy(a),

sudoku (literally ‘number place’), sushi, and even Walkman (although it is made from

two English words), along with the ultimately Chinese judo, jujitsu, tofu, and tycoon.

Zen is ultimately Sanskrit, by way of Chinese. Kamikaze, introduced during World

War II as a term for suicide pilots, literally means ‘divine wind’; it has come to be

used for anything that is recklessly destructive.

foreign elements in the english word stock

265

From Korean come a few general terms, notably kimchi or kimchee ‘spicy pickled

cabbage’ (the national dish of Korea) and tae kwon do ‘a martial art emphasizing foot

kicks.’ Best known are probably the brand names Hyundai (a motor company) and

Samsung (a conglomerate known for electronics).

From the languages spoken in the islands of the Pacific come bamboo, ging-

ham, launch ‘boat,’ and mangrove, and others mostly adopted before the beginning

of the nineteenth century by way of French, Portuguese, Spanish, or Dutch. Rattan,

direct from Malay, appears first in Pepys’s Diary (as rattoon), where it designates,

not the wood, but a cane made of it: “Mr. Hawley did give me a little black rat-

toon, painted and gilt” (September 13, 1660).

Polynesian taboo and tattoo ‘decorative permanent skin marking,’ along with

a few other words from the same source, appear in English around the time of

Captain James Cook’s voyages (1768–79); they occur first in his journals. (This tat-

too is not the same as tattoo ‘drum or bugle signal, (later) military entertainment,’

noted above.) Hula (1825) is Hawaiian Polynesian, as are lanai (1823), lei (1843),

luau (1853), kahuna (1886), ukulele (1896), and wiki (from wiki wiki ‘very quick’ for

‘collaborative Web site or software,’ post 1995). Captain Cook recorded Australian

kangaroo in 1770. Boomerang, another Australian word, is first attested in a native

form, womur-rāng, in 1798 and in the English spelling in 1827. Budgerigar, also

Australian and designating a kind of parrot, is well known in England, where it is

frequently clipped to budgie by those who fancy the birds, usually known as parakeets

in America.

OTHER SOURCES

Loanwords from African Languages

A few words from languages that were spoken on the west coast of Africa have

entered English by way of Portuguese and Spanish, notably banana and yam, both

appearing toward the end of the sixteenth century. It is likely that yam entered the

vocabulary of American English independently. In the South, where it is used more

frequently than elsewhere, it designates not just any kind of sweet potato, as in other

parts, but a red sweet potato, which is precisely the meaning it has in the Gullah form

yambi. Hence it is likely that this word was introduced into Southern American

English direct from Africa, despite its Portuguese transmission in earlier English.

Voodoo, with its variant hoodoo, is likewise of African origin and was intro-

duced by way of Louisiana French. Gorilla is apparently African: it first occurs in

English in the Boston Journal of Natural History in 1847, according to the

Dictionary of Americanisms, though a Latin plural form gorillae occurs in 1799 in

British English. Juke (more correctly jook) and jazz are Americanisms probably of

African origin. Both were more or less disreputable when first introduced but have

in the course of time lost most of their earlier sexual connotations. Other African

words transmitted into American English are banjo, buckra, cooter ‘turtle,’ the syn-

onymous goober and pinder ‘peanut,’ gumbo, jigger ‘sand flea’ (also called chigoe),

and zombi. Samba and rumba are ultimately African, coming to English by way of

Brazilian Portuguese and Cuban Spanish, respectively. Tote ‘to carry’ is also doubtless

of African origin (L. D. Turner 203).

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Slavic, Hungarian, Turkish, and American Indian

Very minor sources of the English vocabulary are Slavic, Hungarian, Turkish, and

American Indian, with few words from these sources used in English contexts with-

out reference to the peoples or places from which they were borrowed. Most have

been borrowed during the Modern English period, since 1500, and practically all

by way of other languages.

Slavic sable comes to us in Middle English times not directly but by way of

French. From Czech we later acquired, also indirectly, polka. Mazurka is from a

Polish term for a dance characteristic of the Mazur community. We have borrowed

the word horde indirectly from the Poles, ultimately from Turkish. Mammoth is

directly from Russian, ultimately from a Siberian language. Other Russian words,

variably naturalized, are apparatchik, bolshevik, borzoi, czar (ultimately Lat.

Caesar), glasnost, intelligentsia (ultimately Latin), kopeck, muzhik, perestroika,

pogrom, ruble, samovar, soviet, sputnik, steppe, tovarisch, troika, tundra, ukase,

and vodka.

Goulash, hussar, and paprika have been taken directly from Hungarian. Coach

comes to us directly from French coche but goes back ultimately to Hungarian

kocsi. Vampire is from Serbo-Croatian, but the shortening to vamp is a purely

native English phenomenon.

Jackal, ultimately Persian, comes to English by way of Turkish; khan, ulti-

mately Turkish, entered English as early as about 1400. Other Turkish words used

in English include fez and the fairly recent shish kebab. Tulip is from tulipa(nt), via

French from Turkish tülbend from Persian dulband; a doublet of the word comes

into English as turban. The flower was so called because it was thought to look

like the headgear. Kismet, like coffee, comes to us from Arabic via Turkish.

American Indian words do not loom large in the common vocabulary even in

American English, although many American place names are of Indian origin.

Algonquian words that have survived are, thanks to the European vogue of James

Fenimore Cooper, about as well known transatlantically as in America: they include

moccasin, papoose, powwow, squaw, toboggan (via Canadian French), tomahawk,

and totem. Others with perhaps fewer literary associations are chipmunk, moose,

opossum, pecan (via American French), skunk, squash, terrapin, and woodchuck

(with folk etymology from a word related to Narragansett ockqutchaun, which was

more than the English settlers could manage, so they also called it a groundhog).

Muskogean words are more or less confined to the southern American states—for

instance, bayou (via Louisiana French) and catalpa. Navajo contributed hogan; and

Siouan, tepee. Loans from Nahuatl, almost invariably of Spanish transmission, are

mentioned above.

THE SOURCES OF RECENT LOANWORDS

English speakers continue to borrow words from almost every language spoken

upon the earth, although no longer with the frequency characteristic of the late

Middle Ages and Renaissance. There has also been a shift in the relative importance

of languages from which English borrows. A study by Garland Cannon of more

than a thousand recent loanwords from eighty-four languages shows that about

foreign elements in the english word stock

267

25 percent are from French; 8 percent each from Japanese and Spanish; 7 percent

each from Italian and Latin; 6 percent each from African languages, German, and

Greek; 4 percent each from Russian and Yiddish; 3 percent from Chinese; and

progressively smaller percentages from Arabic, Portuguese, Hindi, Sanskrit, Hebrew,

Afrikaans, Malayo-Polynesian, Vietnamese, Amerindian languages, Swedish, Bengali,

Danish, Indonesian, Korean, Persian, Amharic, Eskimo-Aleut, Irish, Norwegian, and

thirty other languages.

Latin has declined as a source for loanwords perhaps because English has

already borrowed so much of the Latin vocabulary that there is comparatively little

left to be borrowed. Now, rather than borrow directly, we make new Latinate

words out of English morphemes originally from Latin. The increase in the impor-

tance of Japanese as a source for loans is doubtless a consequence of the increased

commercial importance of Japan. French is the most important single language for

borrowing, but more French loans enter through British than through American

English, because of the geographical proximity of the United Kingdom to France.

Conversely, Spanish loanwords are often borrowed from American Spanish into

American English.

ENGLISH REMAINS ENGLISH

Enough has been written to indicate the cosmopolitanism of the present English

vocabulary. Yet English remains English in every essential respect. The words that

all of us use over and over again and the grammatical structures in which we couch

our observations upon practically everything under the sun remain as distinctively

English as they were in the days of Alfred the Great. What has been acquired from

other languages has not always been particularly worth gaining: no one could prove

by any set of objective standards that army is a “better” word than dright or here,

which it displaced, or that advice is any better than the similarly displaced rede, or

that to contend is any better than to flite. Those who think that manual is a better,

or more beautiful, or more intellectual word than English handbook are, of course,

entitled to their opinion. But such esthetic preferences are purely matters of style

and have nothing to do with the subtle patternings that make one language differ-

ent from another. The words we choose are nonetheless of tremendous interest in

themselves, and they throw a good deal of light upon our cultural history.

But with all its manifold new words from other tongues, English could never have

become anything but English. And as such it has sent out to the world, among many

other things, some of the best books the world has ever known. It is not unlikely, in

the light of writings by English speakers in earlier times, that this would have been so

even if we had never taken any words from outside the word hoard that has come

down to us from those times. It is true that what we have borrowed has brought

greater wealth to our word stock, but the true Englishness of our mother tongue has

in no way been lessened by such loans, as those who speak and write it lovingly will

always keep in mind.

It is highly unlikely that many readers will have noted that the preceding para-

graph contains not a single word of foreign origin. It was perhaps not worth the

slight effort involved to write it so; it does show, however, that English would not

be totally impoverished without its borrowings from other languages. It also

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suggests that a language or a culture as pluralistic, inclusive, and diverse as English

and Anglo-American culture have become still needs, and can function effectively

with, a stable, native core.

FOR FURTHER READING

General

Chua. Day of Empire.

Metcalf. The World in So Many Words.

Serjeantson. A History of Foreign Words in English.

Some Source Languages

Bluestein. Anglish-Yinglish.

Cannon and Kaye. The Arabic Contributions to the English Language.

———. The Persian Contributions to the English Language.

Cannon and Warren. The Japanese Contributions to the English Language.

Chan and Kwok. A Study of Lexical Borrowing from Chinese.

Geipel. The Viking Legacy.

Pfeffer and Cannon. German Loanwords in English.

Rosten. The Joys of Yinglish.

Selected Bibliography

Works cited in the text are listed here, along with some additional books and periodicals that should prove useful in one way or another to the student of the English language. This bibliography is necessarily limited; it includes works ranging from the semipopular to the scholarly abstruse, although only a few specialized studies of technical problems have been included. A few items deal with general linguistics.

Algeo, John, and Adele Algeo, eds. Fifty Years

Aarsleff, Hans. The Study of Language in

among the New Words: A Dictionary of

England, 1780–1860. Minneapolis:University

Neologisms, 1941–1991. New York:

of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Acronyms, Initialisms, & Abbreviations

Allan, Keith, and Kate Burridge. Euphemism &

Dictionary. Detroit, MI:Gale, annual.

Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and

Adams, Valerie. Complex Words in English.

Weapon. New York:Oxford University Press,

Harlow, Essex:Pearson Education, Longman,

1991.

2001.

Allen, Cynthia L. Case Marking and Reanalysis:

Aitchison, Jean. Language Change: Progress or

Grammatical Relations from Old to Early

Decay? 3rd ed. Cambridge:Cambridge

Modern English. Oxford:Clarendon Press,

University Press, 2001.

1995.

_

.

The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and

Allen, Harold B. The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper

Evolution. Cambridge:Cambridge University

Midwest. 3 vols. Minneapolis:University of

Press, 1996.

Minnesota Press, 1973–6.

_

.

Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the

Allen, Irving Lewis. The City in Slang: New York

Mental Lexicon. 3rd ed. Oxford:Blackwell,

Life and Popular Speech. New York:Oxford

2003.

University Press, 1993.

Akmajian, Adrian, ed. Linguistics: An Intro-

_

.

Unkind Words: Ethnic Labeling from

duction to Language and Communication.

“Redskin” to “WASP.” New York:Bergin &

5th ed. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 2001.

Garvey, 1990.

Algeo, John. British or American English? A

Allerton, D. J. Stretched Verb Constructions in

Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns.

English. London:Routledge, 2002.

Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Allsopp, Richard, ed. Dictionary of Caribbean

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, ed.

The Cambridge History of the English

English Usage. Oxford:Oxford University

Language. Vol. 6: English in North America.

Press, 1996.

Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001.

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American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic

Barnhart, Robert K., ed. The Barnhart Dictionary

Usage. Journal of the American Dialect

of Etymology. Bronx, NY:H. W. Wilson,

Society, 1925–.

1988.

American Tongues. Video produced by the Center

Barnhart, Robert K., and Sol Steinmetz with

for New American Media, New York, 1986.

Clarence L. Barnhart. Third Barnhart

Distributed by CNAM Film Library,

Dictionary of New English. Bronx, NY:H. W.

Hohokus, NJ.

Wilson, 1990.

Anderson, Susan, Dwight H. Day, Jr., Paul C.

Baron, Naomi S. Alphabet to Email: How Written

Jordan, and J. Douglas Wingate. Glossary

English Evolved and Where It’s Heading.

of Linguistic Terms. http:/www.sil.org/

London and New York:Routledge, 2000.

linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/

Barrett, Grant. “All We Are Saying.” New York

index.htm.

Times, December 23, 2007. http:/www

Anthony, David W. The Horse, the Wheel, and

.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/weekinreview/

Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the

23buzzwords.html.

Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.

Bauer, Laurie. English Word-Formation.

Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press,

Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1983.

2007.

_

.

An Introduction to International Varieties of

Avis, Walter S., ed. A Dictionary of Canadianisms

English. Edinburgh:Edinburgh University

on Historical Principles. Toronto:Gage, 1967.

Press, 2002.

Avis, Walter S., Patrick D. Drysdale, Robert J.

_

.

Watching English Change: An Introduction

Gregg, Victoria E. Neufeldt, and Matthew H.

to the Study of Linguistic Change in Standard

Scargill, eds. Gage Canadian Dictionary.

Englishes in the Twentieth Century. London:

Toronto:Gage, 1983.

Longman, 1994.

Ayto, John. Euphemisms: Over 3000 Ways to

Bauer, Laurie, and Peter Trudgill, eds. Language

Avoid Being Rude or Giving Offence. London:

Myths. London:Penguin, 1998.

Bloomsbury, 1993.

Baumgardner, Robert J., ed. South Asian English:

_

.

Movers and Shakers: A Chronology of Words

Structure, Use, and Users. Urbana:University

That Shaped Our Age. Rev. ed. Oxford:

of Illinois Press, 1996.

Oxford University Press, 2006.

Bedingfield, Brad, ed. Anglo-Saxon England: A

Bæ

kken, Bjø

rg.

Word Order Patterns in Early

Guide to Online Resources. In ORB: On-line

Modern English: With Special Reference to the

Reference Book for Medieval Studies. http:/

Position of the Subject and the Finite Verb.

www.the-orb.net/encyclop/early/pre1000/

Oslo, Norway:Novus, 1998.

asindex.html.

Bailey, Richard W. Images of English. Ann Arbor:

Beekes, Robert S. P. Comparative Indo-European

University of Michigan Press, 1991.

Linguistics: An Introduction. Amsterdam:

_

.

Nineteenth-Century English. Ann Arbor:

Benjamins, 1995.

University of Michigan Press, 1996.

Bell, Allan, and Koenraad Kuiper, eds. New

Bailey, Richard W., and Manfred Gö

rlach. English

Zealand English. Amsterdam:Benjamins,

as a World Language. Ann Arbor:University

2000.

of Michigan Press, 1982.

Bickerton, Derek. Language & Species. Chicago:

Baker, Peter S. Introduction to Old English. 2nd

University of Chicago Press, 1990.

ed. Malden, MA:Blackwell, 2007. Also http:/

Bierce, Ambrose. Write It Right: A Little Blacklist

www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/

of Literary Faults. New York:Neale, 1909.

index.html.

Black, Jeremy. A History of the British Isles. New

Baker, Sidney J. The Australian Language. 1966.

York:St. Martin ’s, 1996.

Reprint, South Melbourne:Sun Books, 1986.

_

.

A New History of England. Stroud,

Baldi, Philip. An Introduction to the Indo-

Gloucestershire, UK:Sutton, 2000.

European Languages. Carbondale:Southern

Blake, Joanna. Routes to Child Language:

Illinois University Press, 1983.

Evolutionary and Developmental Precursors.

Barber, Charles. Early Modern English. New

Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000.

ed. Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press,

Blake, Norman, ed. The Cambridge History of the

1997.

English Language. Vol. 2: 1066–1476.

Barney, Stephen A. Word-Hoard: An Introduction

Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992.

to Old English Vocabulary. 2nd ed. New

Bloom, Paul. How Children Learn the Meanings

Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1985.

of Words. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 2000.

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Bluestein, Gene. Anglish-Yinglish: Yiddish

Campbell, Lyle, and Mauricio J. Mixco. A

in American Life and Literature.

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Glossary

ablative A case form typically denoting separation, source, instrument, or cause.

ablaut or gradation An alternation of vowels in forms of the same word, as in the

principal parts of strong verbs, such as sing–sang–sung.

abstract meaning Reference to a nonphysical, generalized abstraction like domesticity

(cf. concrete meaning).

accent Any of the diacritical marks:acute, grave, circumflex; also the prominence given

to a syllable by stress or intonation; also a manner of pronouncing a dialect, as in

Boston accent.

acceptability The extent to which an expression is regarded as unobjectionable by speakers

of a language.

accusative A case form typically marking the direct object of a verb.

acronym, also acronymy A word formed from the initial letters of other words (or

syllables) pronounced by the normal rules of orthoepy, e.g., AIDS ‘acquired immune

deficiency syndrome’; also the process of forming such words.

acute accent A diacritic (´) used in spelling words in some languages (as in Spanish qué

‘what?’) and to indicate primary stress (as in ópera).

adjective A major part of speech that denotes qualities and modifies or describes nouns.

advanced pronunciation An early instance of a sound change in progress.

adverb A major part of speech that modifies sentences, verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.

æsc A letter of the runic alphabet denoting the sound [æ

].

affix A morpheme added to a base or stem to modify its meaning.

affixation Making words by combining an affix with a base or stem.

affricate A stop sound with a fricative release.

African-American English or Black English The ethnic dialect associated with Americans

of African descent.

281

282

glossary

Afroasiatic A family of languages whose main branches are Hamitic and Semitic.

agglutinative language A language with complex but usually regular derivational forms.

agreement See concord.

allomorph A variant pronunciation of a morpheme, as the -s plural morpheme is

pronounced [s], [z], or [

ǝz].

allophone A variant articulation of a phoneme, as /t/is [t h]in tone, but [t]in stone.

alphabet, adj. alphabetic A writing system in which each unit, or letter, ideally represents

a single sound.

alphabetism A word formed from the initial letters of other words (or syllables)

pronounced with the names of the letters of the alphabet, e.g., VP ‘vice president.’

Altaic A language family including Turkish and Mongolian.

alveolar Involving the gum ridge; also a sound made by the tongue’s approaching the

gum ridge.

alveolopalatal Involving the gum ridge and the hard palate; also a sound made by the

tongue’s approaching the gum ridge and hard palate.

amalgamated compound An originally compounded word whose form no longer

represents its origin, e.g., not from na þ wiht ‘no whit.’

amelioration A semantic change improving the associations of a word.

American English The English language as developed in North America.

Americanism An expression that originated in or is characteristic of America.

analytical comparison Comparison with more and most rather than -er and -est.

analytic Of a language that depends heavily on word order and function words as signals

of grammatical structure.

anaptyxis, adj. anaptyctic See Svarabhakti.

Anatolian A branch of Indo-European languages spoken in Asia Minor, including Hittite.

Anglian The Mercian and Northumbrian dialects of Old English, sharing certain features.

Anglo-Frisian The subbranch of West Germanic including English and Frisian.

Anglo-Norman The dialect of Norman French that developed in England.

Anglo-Saxon Old English; also one who spoke it; also pertaining to the Old English period.

animal communication The exchange of information among animals, contrasted with

human language.

apheresis, adj. apheretic, also apheretic form The omission of sounds from the beginning

of a word, e.g., ’cause from because; also a form produced by such omission.

aphesis, adj. aphetic The omission of an unaccented syllable from the beginning of a word,

e.g., lone from alone.

apocope or apocopation The omission of a sound from the end of a word, as a from a(n).

arbitrary Unmotivated, having no similarity with the referent (cf. conventional).

artificial language A language like Esperanto invented especially for a particular use,

e.g., international.

ash The digraph æ used in Old English and so called after the runic letter æsc,

representing the same sound.

ask word Any of the words whose historical [æ

]vowel has been changed to [

ɑ]in British

and [a]in eastern New England speech.

glossary

283

ASL American Sign Language for the deaf, also called Ameslan, one of several such

systems, another being BSL (British Sign Language).

aspiration, adj. aspirated A puff of breath accompanying a speech sound.

assimilation The process by which two sounds become more alike, e.g., -ed pronounced

[t]after voiceless sounds but [d]after voiced sounds.

associative change See paradigmatic change.

a-stem An Old English noun declension, which originally had the vowel a before its

inflectional endings, from which come Modern English genitive ’s and plural s.

asterisk A star (*

) used to indicate either a reconstructed ancient form or an abnormal or

nonoccurring form in present-day use, as Indo-European *

dw ō ‘two’ or present-day

*thinked.

athematic verb An Indo-European verb stem formed without a thematic vowel.

Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian A family of languages, including Malay and

Polynesian, spoken from Madagascar to the Pacific islands.

back-formation A word made by omitting from a longer word what is thought to be an

affix or other morpheme, e.g., burgle from burglar; also the process by which such

words are made.

back vowel A vowel made with the highest part of the tongue in the back of the mouth.

Baltic An east-European branch of Indo-European, grouped together with the Slavic

languages as Balto-Slavic.

Balto-Slavic A branch of Indo-European including the Slavic and Baltic languages.

bar A diacritic used in writing Polish, as in ł.

base morpheme A morpheme, either free or bound, to which other morphemes can be

added to form words, e.g., base in basic or cur in recur.

bilabial Involving both upper and lower lips; also a sound made with both lips, e.g., [p, b, m].

Black English See African-American English.

blending, also blend or portmanteau word Making words by combining two or more

existing expressions and shortening at least one of them; also a word so made, e.g.,

brunch from breakfast þ lunch.

borrow, also borrowing or loanword To make a word by imitating a foreign word; also a

word so made, such as tortilla from Mexican Spanish.

bound morpheme A morpheme used only as part of a word, rather than alone, e.g., mit in

remit.

boustrophedon A method of writing in which lines are alternately read left to right and

vice versa in successive lines.

Briticism An expression that originated in Britain after American Independence or is

characteristic of Britain.

British English The English language as developed in Great Britain after American

independence.

broad transcription Phonetic transcription with little detail, showing primarily phonemic

distinctions.

calque See loan translation.

case The inflectional form of a noun, pronoun, or adjective that shows the word’s relation-

ship to the verb or to other nouns of its clause, as them is the objective case of they.

284

glossary

cedilla A diacritic (¸) used in writing several languages (e.g., in French ç).

Celtic A branch of Indo-European spoken in western Europe, including Erse and Welsh.

central vowel A vowel made with the highest part of the tongue in the center of the mouth

between the positions for front and back vowels, like [ǝ].

centum language One of the mainly western Indo-European languages in which palatal

and velar [k]became one phoneme.

circle A diacritic (°) used in writing Swedish and Norwegian, e.g., in å.

circumflex accent A diacritic (^

) used in writing words in some languages, as in French

île ‘island’; also sometimes used to represent reduced primary stress, as in élevàtor

ôperàtor.

clang association A semantic change shifting the meaning of a word through association

with another word of similar sound, as fruition ME ‘enjoyment’ >ModE ‘completion’

by association with fruit.

click A sound like that represented by tsk-tsk, produced by drawing in air with the tongue

rather than expelling it from the lungs.

clip, also clipped form To form a word by shortening a longer expression; also a word so

formed, e.g., soap from soap opera.

closed syllable A syllable ending with a consonant, e.g., seed.

close e The mid vowel [e], a higher sound than open [ ε].

close o The mid vowel [o], a higher sound than open [ ɔ].

Coastal Southern See Southern.

cognate Of words, developed from a common source; also one of a set of words so

developed, e.g., tax and task or English father and Latin pater.

collocation The tendency of particular words to combine with each other, e.g., tall person

versus high mountain.

combining Making a word by joining two or more existing expressions, e.g., Web page.

commonization A functional shift from proper to common noun or other part of speech,

e.g., shanghai from the port city.

comparison The modification of an adjective or adverb’s form to show degrees of the

quality it denotes:positive ( funny, comic), comparative (funnier, more comic), superla-

tive (funniest, most comic).

complementary distribution Occurrence (of sounds or forms) in different, noncontrastive

environments.

compound A word formed by combining two or more bases; also a word so formed,

e.g., lunchbox or Webcast.

concord or agreement Matching the inflectional ending of one word for number, gender,

case, or person with that of another to which it is grammatically related, e.g., this

book – these books.

concrete meaning Reference to a physical object or event like house (cf. abstract meaning).

conjugation The inflection of verbs for person, number, tense, and mood.

connotation The associations or suggested meanings a word has in addition to its literal

sense.

consonant A speech sound formed with some degree of constriction in the breath channel

and typically found in the margins of syllables.

glossary

285

consuetudinal be Uninflected be used for habitual or regular action in several varieties

of nonstandard English.

contraction The shortened pronunciation or spelling of an unstressed word as part of a

neighboring word, e.g., I’m. See also enclitic.

contrastive or minimal pair A pair of words that differ by a single sound, e.g., pin–tin.

conventional Learned, rather than determined by genetic inheritance or natural law

(cf. arbitrary).

creating See root creation.

creole A language combining the features of several other languages, sometimes begun

as a pidgin.

creolize To become or make into a creole by mixing languages or, in the case of a pidgin,

by becoming a full native language for some speakers.

Cyrillic The alphabet used to write Russian and some other Slavic languages.

Danelaw The northeast part of Anglo-Saxon England heavily settled by Scandinavians

and governed by their law code.

dative A case typically marking the indirect object or recipient.

declension The inflection of a noun, pronoun, or adjective for case and number and, in

earlier English, of adjectives also for definiteness, e.g., they–them–their–theirs.

definite article A function word signaling a definite noun, specifically the.

definiteness A grammatical category for noun phrases, indicating that the speaker assumes

the hearer can identify the referent of the phrase.

demonstrative pronoun A pronoun like this or that indicating relative closeness to the

speaker.

denotation The literal meaning of a word, apart from any associated or suggested meanings.

dental Involving the teeth; also a sound made with the teeth.

dental suffix A [d]or [t]ending used in Germanic languages to form the preterit.

diachronic Pertaining to change through time, historical (cf. synchronic).

diacritical mark(ing) An accent or other modification of an alphabetical letter used to

differentiate it from the unmarked letter.

dialect A variety of a language used in a particular place or by a particular social group.

dictionary A reference book giving such information about words as spelling, pronuncia-

tion, meaning, grammatical class, history, and limitations on use.

dieresis or umlaut A diacritic (¨) used to differentiate one letter from another as repre-

senting sounds of different qualities, as in German Brüder ‘brothers’ versus Bruder

‘brother,’ or to show that the second of two vowels is pronounced as a separate

syllable, as in naïve.

digraph A combination of two letters to represent a single sound, e.g., sh in she.

diminutive An affix meaning ‘small’ and suggesting an emotional attitude to the referent;

also a word formed with such an affix, such as doggie.

diphthong A combination of two vowel sounds in one syllable, e.g., [a I].

diphthongization The change of a simple vowel into a diphthong.

direct source or immediate source The form from which another form is most closely

derived (cf. ultimate source).

displacement The use of language to talk about things not physically present.

286

glossary

dissimilation The process by which two sounds become less alike, e.g., the pronunciation

of diphtheria beginning [d Ip-].

distinctive sound See phoneme.

double comparison Comparison using both more or most and -er or -est with the same

word, e.g., more friendlier or most unkindest.

double or multiple negative Two or more negatives used for emphasis.

double plural A plural noun using two historically different plural markers, e.g., child

þ r þ en.

double superlative Double comparison in the superlative degree, or indicated by an ending

like -most as in foremost, etymologically two superlative suffixes, -m and -est.

doublet One of two or more words in a language derived from the same etymon but by

different channels, e.g., shirt, short, and skirt, or faction and fashion.

Dravidian The indigenous languages of India, now spoken chiefly in the south.

duality of patterning The twofold system of language, consisting of the arrangements of

both meaningful units such as words and morphemes and also of meaningless units

such as phonemes.

dual number A grammatical form indicating exactly two; survivals in English are the

pronouns both, either, and neither.

early Modern English English during the period 1500–1800.

ease of articulation Efficiency of movement of the organs of articulation as a motive for

sound change.

East Germanic A subbranch of the Germanic languages that includes Gothic.

echoic word A word whose sound suggests its referent, e.g., plop or fizz.

edh or eth or crossed d The Old English letter ð.

edited English See standard English.

ejaculation An echoic word for a nonlinguistic utterance expressing emotion, e.g., oof

or wow.

elision, verb elide The omission of sounds in speech or writing, as in let’s or Hallowe’en

(from All Hallow Even).

ellipsis, adj. elliptic(al) The omission of words in speech or writing, as in “Jack could eat

no fat; his wife, no lean.”

enclitic A grammatically independent word pronounced by contraction as part of a

preceding word, e.g.,’ll for will in I’ll.

epenthesis, adj. epenthetic The pronunciation of an unhistorical sound within a word,

e.g., length pronounced “lengkth” or thimble from earlier thimel.

eponym, adj. eponymous A word derived from the name of a person; also the person

from whose name such a word derives, e.g., ohm ‘unit of electrical resistance’ from

Georg S. Ohm, German physicist.

ethnic dialect A dialect used by a particular ethnic group.

etymological respelling Respelling a word to reflect the spelling of an etymon; also a word

so respelled, e.g., debt for dette because of Latin debitum.

etymological sense The meaning of a word at earlier times in its history, especially of the

word’s etymon.

etymology The origin and history of a word; also the study of word origins and history.

glossary

287

etymon, pl. etyma A source word from which a later word is derived.

euphemism An expression replacing another that is under social taboo or is less

prestigious; also the process of such replacement.

explosive See stop.

eye dialect The representation of standard pronunciations by unconventional spellings,

e.g., duz for does.

finite form A form of the verb identifying tense or the person or number of its subject.

Finno-Ugric A language family including Finnish and Hungarian.

first or native language The language a speaker learns first or uses by preference.

First Sound Shift A systematic change of the Indo-European stop sounds in Proto-

Germanic, formulated by Grimm’s Law.

folk etymology A popularly invented but incorrect explanation for the origin of a word

that sometimes changes the word’s form; also the process by which such an explanation

is made.

foreign language A language used for special purposes or infrequently and with varying

degrees of fluency.

free morpheme A morpheme that can be used alone as a word.

free variation A substitution of sounds that do not alter meaning, e.g., a palatalized

(“clear”) or velarized (“dark”) [l]in silly.

fricative or spirant A sound made by narrowing the breath channel to produce friction.

front vowel A vowel made with the highest part of the tongue in the front of the mouth.

functional shift Shifting a word from one grammatical use to another; also a word so shifted.

function word A part of speech, typically with a limited number of members, used to

signal grammatical structure, such as prepositions, conjunctions, and articles.

futhorc The runic alphabet.

gender A grammatical category loosely correlated with sex in Indo-European languages.

generalization A semantic change expanding the kinds of referents of a word.

General Semantics A linguistic philosophy emphasizing the arbitrary nature of language.

genetic classification A grouping of languages based on their historical development from

a common source.

genitive A case typically showing possessor or source.

geographical or regional dialect A dialect used in a particular geographical area.

Germanic The northern European branch of Indo-European to which English belongs.

gesture A bodily movement, expression, or position that conveys meaning and often

accompanies language. See also kinesics.

glide The semivowel or subordinate vowel that accompanies a vowel, either an on-glide

like the [y]in mule [myul]or an off-glide like the [ I]in mile [ma Il].

glottal Involving the glottis or vocal cords.

gradation See ablaut.

grammar or morphosyntax The system by which words are related to one another within

a sentence; a description of that system.

grammatical function A category for which words are inflected, such as case, number,

gender, definiteness, person, tense, mood, and aspect.

288

glossary

grammatical gender The assignment of nouns to inflectional classes that have sexual

connotations without matching the sex of the noun’s referent.

grammatical signal A word, affix, concord, order, pitch, or stress that indicates

grammatical structure.

grammatical system The patterns for combining the morphemes, words, phrases, and

clauses of a language.

grave accent A diacritic (`) used in spelling words of some languages, as in French père

‘father,’ and to indicate secondary stress, as in óperàte.

Great Vowel Shift A systematic change in the articulation of the Middle English long

vowels before and during the early Modern English period.

Grimm’s Law A formulation of the First Sound Shift made by Jakob Grimm in 1822.

group genitive A genitive construction in which the ending ’s is added at the end of a

noun phrase to a word other than the head of the phrase: the neighbor next-door’s dog.

haček or wedge A diacritic (ˇ) used in spelling words of some languages, as in Czech

haček ‘little hook,’ and to modify some letters for phonetic transcription, as in [š].

Hamitic Former term for a family of languages spoken in North Africa, including ancient

Egyptian.

Hellenic The branch of the Indo-European family spoken in Greece.

Heptarchy The seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England.

High German or Second Sound Shift A systematic shifting of certain stop sounds in

southern German dialects.

high vowel A vowel made with the jaw nearly closed and the tongue near the roof of the

mouth.

his-genitive The use of a possessive pronoun after a noun to signal a genitive meaning:

Jones his house.

homograph A word spelled like another.

homonym A word spelled or pronounced like another.

homophone A word pronounced like another.

homorganic Having the same place of articulation as another sound.

hook A diacritic (˛) used in writing some languages like Polish and Lithuanian, and by

modern editors under the Middle English vowels ę and ǫ to represent their open

varieties.

hybrid form(ation) An expression made by combining parts whose etyma are from more

than one language.

hyperbole A semantic change involving exaggeration.

hypercorrection or hypercorrect pronunciation An analogical form created under the

misimpression that an error is being corrected, e.g., “Do you want she or I to go?” for

“Do you want her or me to go?” or hand pronounced with “broad” [ɑ]rather than

[æ

].

ideographic or logographic writing A system whose basic units represent word meanings.

idiolect A variety of a language characteristic of a particular person.

idiom A combination of morphemes whose total meaning cannot be predicted from the

meanings of its constituents.

immediate source See direct source.

glossary

289

imperative A mood of the verb used for orders or requests.

impersonal verb or construction A verb used without a subject or with dummy it.

i-mutation See i-umlaut.

incorporative language A language that combines in one word concepts that would be

expressed by different major sentence elements (such as verb and direct object) in other

languages.

indicative A mood of the verb used for reporting fact.

Indo-European The language family including most languages of Europe, Persia,

Afghanistan, and north India.

Indo-Iranian The branch of Indo-European including Persian and Indic languages.

inflected infinitive A declined infinitive used as a noun in Old English.

inflection Changes in the form of words relating them to one another within a sentence.

inflectional suffix A word ending that serves to connect the word to others in a grammatical

construction.

inflective language A language whose words change their form, often irregularly, to show

their grammatical connections.

initialism A word formed from the initial letters of other words or syllables, whether

pronounced as an acronym like AIDS or an alphabetism like HIV.

inkhorn term A word introduced into the English language during the early Modern English

period but used primarily in writing rather than speech; more generally, a pompous

expression.

Inland Southern See South Midland.

inorganic -e A historically unexpected but pronounced e added to Middle English words by

analogy.

instrumental A case typically designating means or instrument.

Insular hand The style of writing generally used for Old English, of Irish provenance.

intensifier A word like very that strengthens the meaning of the word it accompanies.

interdental Involving the upper and lower teeth; a sound made by placing the tongue

between those teeth.

interrogative pronoun A pronoun used to signal a question, e.g., who, which, or what.

intonation Patterns of pitch in sentences.

intrusion The introduction of an unhistorical sound into a word.

intrusive r An etymologically unexpected and unspelled r sound pronounced in some

dialects between a word ending with a vowel and another beginning with one, as in

“Cuba[r]is south of Florida. ”

intrusive schwa The pronunciation of a schwa where it is historically unexpected, as in film

pronounced in two syllables as “fillum.”

inverse spelling A misspelling, such as *chicking for chicken, by analogy with spellings like

standard picking for the pronunciation pickin’ [ˈpɪkɪn].

isolating language A language whose words tend to be invariable.

Italic A branch of Indo-European spoken in Italy.

Italo-Celtic The Italic and Celtic branches of Indo-European seen as sharing some common

characteristics.

290

glossary

i-umlaut or i-mutation The fronting or raising of a vowel by assimilation to an [i]sound in

the following syllable.

kanji Japanese ideographs derived from Chinese.

Kechumaran A language family of the Andes Mountains.

Kentish The Old English dialect of Kent.

Khoisan A group of languages spoken in southwestern Africa.

kinesics The study of body movements that convey meaning, or the movements themselves.

koine Greek as spoken throughout the Mediterranean world in the Hellenistic and Roman

periods; hence, a widely distributed variety of any language.

labial Involving the lip or lips; also a sound made with the lip or lips.

labiodental Involving the upper lip and lower teeth; also a sound made with the upper lip

and lower teeth.

language The ability of human beings to communicate by a system of conventional signs;

also a particular system of such signs shared by the members of a community.

language family A group of languages evolved from a common source.

laryngeal Pertaining to the larynx; also a type of sound postulated for Proto-Indo-European,

but attested only in Hittite.

late Modern English English during the period 1800–present.

lateral With air flowing around either or both sides of the tongue; also a sound so made.

lax vowel A vowel made with relatively lax tongue muscles.

learned loanword A word borrowed through educated channels and often preserving

foreign spelling, pronunciation, meaning, inflections, or associations.

learned word A word used in bookish contexts, often with a technical sense.

length Duration of a sound, phonemic in older stages of English.

lengthening Change of a short sound to a long one.

leveling or merging Loss of distinctiveness between sounds or forms.

lexis The stock of meaningful units of a language:morphemes, words, and idioms.

ligature A written symbol made from two or more letters joined together, e.g., æ

.

linking r An r pronounced by otherwise r-less speakers at the end of a word followed by

another word beginning with a vowel, as in “ever and again.”

liquid A sound produced without friction and capable of being continuously sounded, as

vowels are:[r]and [l].

loan translation or calque An expression made by combining forms that individually

translate the parts of a foreign combination, e.g., trial balloon from French ballon

d’essai.

loanword A word made by imitating the form of a word in another language.

locative A case typically showing place.

logographic writing See ideographic writing.

long s One of the Old English variations of the letter s ( ) that continued in use through

the eighteenth century.

long syllable A syllable with a long vowel or a short vowel followed by two or more

consonants.

long vowel A vowel of greater duration than a corresponding short vowel.

glossary

291

low vowel A vowel made with the jaw open and the tongue not near the roof of the mouth.

macron A diacritic (¯) over a vowel used to indicate that it is long.

majuscule A large or capital letter.

Malayo-Polynesian See Austronesian.

manner of articulation The configuration of the speech organs to make a particular sound:

stop, fricative, nasal, etc.

marked word A word whose meaning includes a semantic limitation lacking from an

unmarked word, as stallion is marked for ‘male’ and mare for ‘female’ whereas horse is

unmarked for sex.

meaning That which is intended or understood to be represented by a morpheme, word,

idiom, or other linguistic form.

Mercian The Old English dialect of Mercia.

merging See leveling.

metaphor A semantic change shifting the meaning of a word because of a perceived

resemblance between the old and new referents, e.g., window (of opportunity) ‘interval

of time.’

metathesis A reversal in the order of two sounds, as in task and tax [tæ

ks].

metonymy A semantic change shifting the meaning of a word because the old and new

referents are associated with each other, e.g., suit for ‘business executive’ or rifles for

‘foot soldiers.’

Middle English English of the period 1100–1500.

mid vowel A vowel with the jaw and tongue between the positions for high and low vowels.

minimal pair See contrastive pair.

minuscule A small or lowercase letter.

Modern English English of the period since 1500.

monophthong A simple vowel with a single stable quality.

monophthongization or smoothing Change of a diphthong to a simple vowel.

morpheme The smallest meaningful unit in language, a class of meaningful sequences of

sounds that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful sequences.

morphology The part of a language system or description concerned with the structure of

morphemes into words, distinguished from syntax; morphology is either derivational

(the structure of words generally) or grammatical (inflection and other aspects of word

structure relating to syntax).

morphosyntax See grammar.

mutation See umlaut.

narrow transcription Phonetic transcription showing fine phonetic detail.

nasal Involving the nose; also a sound made with air flow through the nose.

native language See first language.

natural gender The assignment of nouns to grammatical classes matching the sex or

sexlessness of the referent.

neo-Latin Latin forms invented after the end of the Middle Ages, especially in scientific use.

New England short o A lax vowel used by some New Englanders in road and home

corresponding to tense [o]in standard English.

292

glossary

Niger-Kordofanian A group of languages spoken in the southern part of Africa.

Nilo-Saharan A group of languages spoken in middle Africa.

nominative A case typically marking the subject of a sentence.

nondistinctive Not capable of signaling a difference in meaning.

nonfinite form A form of the verb not identifying tense or the person or number of its

subject, specifically, the infinitive and participles.

nonrhotic See r-less.

Norman French The dialect of French spoken in Normandy.

Northern A dialect of American English stretching across the northernmost part of the

country.

North Germanic A subbranch of the Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia.

North Midland A dialect of American English spoken in the area immediately south of

Northern.

Northumbrian The Old English dialect of Northumbria.

Nostratic A hypothetical language family including Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, perhaps

Afroasiatic, and others.

noun A major part of speech with the class meaning of thingness.

n-plural The plural form of a few nouns derived from the n-stem declension.

n-stem An important Old English declension with [n]prominent in many forms.

objective form A form of pronouns used as objects of verbs and prepositions, merging the

older accusative and dative functions.

objective meaning Semantic reference to something outside the individual, like danger or

pitifulness (cf. subjective meaning).

oblique form Any case other than the nominative.

off-glide The less prominent or glide vowel following the more prominent vowel of a

diphthong.

Old English English of the period 449–1100.

onomatopoeia, adj. onomatopoe(t)ic The formation of an echoic word.

open e The mid vowel [ε], a lower sound than close [e].

open o The mid vowel [ɔ], a lower sound than close [o].

open syllable A syllable ending in a vowel, e.g., see.

open system A system, like language, that can be adapted to new uses and produce new

results.

oral-aural Produced by the speech organs and perceived by the ear.

organ of speech Any part of the anatomy (such as the lips, teeth, tongue, roof of the mouth,

throat, and glottis) that has been adapted to producing speech sounds.

orthoepist, also orthoepy One who studies the pronunciation of a language as it relates to

spelling; also such study.

orthography A writing system for representing the words or sounds of a language with

visible marks.

ō-stem An important class of Old English feminine nouns.

overgeneralization The creation of nonstandard forms by analogy, e.g., *bringed for

brought by analogy with regular verbs.

glossary

293

OV language A language in which objects precede their verbs.

palatal Involving the hard palate; also a sound made by touching the tongue against the

hard palate.

palatalization The process of making a sound more palatal by moving the blade of the

tongue toward the hard palate.

palatovelar Either palatal or velar.

paradigmatic or associative change Language change resulting from the influence on an

expression of other expressions that might occur instead of it or are otherwise associ-

ated with it, as bridegum was changed to bridegroom.

paralanguage The vocal qualities, facial expressions, and gestures that accompany language

and convey meaning.

parataxis The juxtaposition of clauses without connecting conjunctions.

part of speech A class of words with the same or similar potential to enter into grammatical

combinations.

pejoration A semantic change worsening the associations of a word.

personal ending A verb inflection to show whether the subject is the speaker (first person),

the addressee (second person), or someone else (third person).

personal pronoun A pronoun referring to the speaker (I, we), the addressee (you), or others

(he, she, it, they).

phoneme, adj. phonemic, or distinctive sound The basic unit of phonology, a sound that is

capable of distinguishing one meaningful form from another; a class of sounds that are

phonetically similar and in either complementary distribution or free variation.

phonetic alphabet An alphabet with a single distinct letter for each language sound.

phonetic transcription A written representation of speech sounds.

phonogram A written symbol that represents a language sound.

phonological space The range of difference between sounds expressed as the articulatory

space in which they are produced or a graph of their acoustic properties.

phonology See sound system.

pidgin A reduced language combining features from several languages and used for special

purposes among persons who share no other common language.

pitch The musical tone that marks a syllable as prominent in some languages.

place of articulation The point in the breath channel where the position of the speech organs

produces a particular sound.

plosive See stop.

popular loanword A word borrowed through everyday communication and often adapted

to native norms of spelling, pronunciation, meaning, inflection, and associations.

portmanteau word See blend.

postposition A function word, like a preposition, that comes after rather than before its

object.

prefix An affix that comes before its base.

pre-Germanic The dialect of Indo-European evolving into Germanic, as it was before the

distinctive Germanic features developed.

pre–Old English The language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons while they lived on the

Continent.

294

glossary

preposition A function word that often precedes a noun phrase and relates that phrase to

other parts of the sentence.

prescriptive grammar Grammar mainly concerned with prescribing the right forms of

language.

present tense A form of the verb that represents time other than the past; Germanic

languages such as English have only two tense forms, the present tense being used for

the present, the future, and the timeless.

preterit-present verb An originally strong verb whose preterit tense came to be used with

present-time meaning and which acquired a new weak preterit for past time.

preterit tense A form of the verb that represents past time.

primary stress The most prominent stress in a word or phrase, indicated by a raised stroke

(ˈ) or an acute accent mark.

principal part One of the forms of a verb from which all other inflected forms can be made

by regular changes.

pronoun A function word with contextually varying meaning used in place of a noun

phrase.

pronunciation The way words are said.

pronunciation spelling A respelling that suggests a particular pronunciation of a word more

accurately than the original spelling does.

prosodic signals Pitch, stress, or rhythm as grammatical signals.

Proto-Germanic The Germanic branch of Indo-European before it became clearly

differentiated into subbranches and languages.

Proto-Indo-European The ancestor of Indo-European languages.

Proto-World or Proto-Human The hypothetical original language of humanity from which

all others evolved.

purism The belief in an unchanging, absolute standard of correctness.

qualitative change Change in the fundamental nature or perceived identity of a sound.

quantitative change Change in the length of a sound, especially a vowel.

rebus A visual pun in which a written sign stands for a meaning other than its usual one by

virtue of a similarity between the pronunciations of two words, as the numeral 4 repre-

sents for in “Car 4 Sale.”

received pronunciation or RP The prestigious accent of upper-class British speech.

reconstruction A hypothetical early form of a word for which no direct evidence is

available.

reflexive construction A verb with a reflexive pronoun, especially a redundant one, as its

object, as in “I repent me.”

regional dialect See geographical dialect.

register A variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in particular circumstances.

relative pronoun A pronoun at the front of a relative clause.

retarded pronunciation An old-fashioned pronunciation.

retroflex Of the tongue, bent back; also a sound produced with the tip of the tongue curled

upward.

rhotacism A shift of the sound [z]to [r].

r-less or nonrhotic speech Dialects in which [r]is pronounced only before a vowel.

glossary

295

Romance language Any of the languages developed from Latin in historical times.

root An abstract form historically underlying actual forms, as IE *

es- is the root of OE eom,

is, sind and of Lat. sum, est, sunt; also a base morpheme without affixes.

root-consonant stem A class of Old English nouns in which inflectional endings were

added directly to the root, without a stem-forming suffix of the kind found in a-stems,

ō-stems, n-stems, and r-stems.

root creation Making a new word by inventing its form without reference to any existing

word or sound; also a word so invented.

rounded vowel A vowel made with the lips protruded.

RP See received pronunciation.

r-stem A minor Old English declension characterized by an [r]from rhotacism of earlier [z]

in some forms.

rune One of the letters of the early Germanic writing system; a letter of the futhorc.

Samoyed A group of Uralic languages spoken in northern Siberia.

satem language One of the generally eastern Indo-European languages in which palatal [k]

became a sibilant.

schwa The mid-central vowel or the phonetic symbol for it [ǝ].

scribal -e An unpronounced e added to words by a scribe usually for reasons of manuscript

spacing.

secondary stress A stress less prominent than primary, indicated by a lowered stroke (ˌ) or a

grave accent mark.

second language A language used frequently for important purposes in addition to a first or

native language.

Second Sound Shift See High German Shift.

semantic change Change in the meaning of an expression.

semantic contamination Change of meaning through the influence of a similar-sounding

word, in the same or a foreign language.

semantic marking The presence of semantic limitations in the meaning of a word; see

marked word, unmarked word.

semantics Meaning in language; also its study.

Semitic A family of languages including Arabic and Hebrew.

semivowel A sound articulated like a vowel but functioning like a consonant, such as [y]

and [w].

sense The referential meaning of an expression.

shibboleth A language use that distinguishes between in-group and out-group members.

shifting Making a new word by changing its grammatical use or meaning.

shortening Of vowels, changing a long vowel to a short one; of words, making new words

by omitting part of an old expression.

short syllable A syllable containing a short vowel followed by no more than one consonant.

short vowel A vowel of lesser duration than a corresponding long vowel.

sibilant A sound made with a groove down the center of the tongue producing a hissing

effect.

sign Any meaningful expression.

296

glossary

Sino-Tibetan A group of languages spoken in China, Tibet, and Burma.

slang A deliberately undignified form of language that marks the user as belonging to an

in-group.

slash See virgule.

Slavic An east-European branch of Indo-European, grouped together with the Baltic

languages as Balto-Slavic.

smoothing Monophthongization of certain Old English diphthongs.

social change Language change caused by change in the way of life of its speakers.

social dialect The speech of a particular social group.

sound system or phonology The units of sound (phonemes) of a language with their possible

arrangements and varieties of vocal expression.

Southern or Coastal Southern A dialect of American English spoken in the eastern part of

the country south of Maryland.

South Midland or Inland Southern A dialect of American English spoken in the

Appalachians and southwestward.

specialization A semantic change restricting the kinds of referents of a word.

speech The oral-aural expression of language.

spelling The representation of the sounds of a word by written letters.

spelling pronunciation An unhistorical pronunciation based on the spelling of a word.

spelling reform An effort to make spelling closer to pronunciation.

spirant See fricative.

Sprachbund An association of languages, which may be genetically unrelated, spoken in the

same area, sharing bilingual speakers, and therefore influencing one another.

spread vowel See unrounded vowel.

square bracket Either of the signs [and ]used to enclose phonetic transcriptions.

standard language, specifically standard English, also edited English A prestigious language

variety described in dictionaries and grammars, taught in schools, used for public

affairs, and having no regional limitations.

stem A form consisting of a base plus an affix to which other affixes are added.

stop or explosive or plosive A sound made by completely blocking the flow of air and then

unblocking it.

stress The loudness, length, and emphasis that mark a syllable as prominent.

stroke letter A letter that, in medieval handwriting, was made with straight lines so that it

could not be distinguished from other stroke letters when they were written next to each

other:i, m, n, u.

strong declension A Germanic noun or adjective declension in which the stem originally

ended in a vowel.

strong verb A Germanic verb whose principal parts were formed by ablaut of the stem

vowel.

style The choice made among available linguistic options.

subjective meaning Semantic reference to something inside the individual, such as a

psychological state like fear or compassion (cf. objective meaning).

subjunctive A mood of the verb for events viewed as suppositional, contingent, or desired.

glossary

297

substratum theory The proposal that a language indigenous to a region affects a language

more recently introduced there.

suffix An affix that comes after its base.

superstratum theory The proposal that a language recently introduced into a region affects

the language spoken there earlier.

suppletive form An inflectional form that is historically from a different word than the one

it has become associated with, e.g., went as the preterit of go.

svarabhakti or anaptyxis The insertion of a vowel sound between consonants where it is

historically unexpected, as in [f ɪlǝm]for film.

syllabary or syllabic writing A writing system in which each unit represents a syllable.

symbolic word A word created from sound sequences with vague symbolic meanings as a

result of their occurrence in sets of semantically associated words, as gl in gleam, glitter,

gloss, and glow may suggest ‘light.’

synchronic Pertaining to a point in time without regard to historical change; contemporary

(cf. diachronic).

syncope The loss of a sound from the interior of a word, as in family pronounced “fam’ly.”

synecdoche A semantic change shifting the meaning of a word by using a more inclusive

term for a less inclusive one or vice versa, for example, the whole for a part (society

for ‘socially prominent people’), a part for the whole ([hired] hand for ‘worker’),

the genus for a species (creature for ‘human being’), a species for the genus ([daily]

bread for ‘food’), or a material for something made from it (iron for ‘instrument for

pressing’).

synesthesia A semantic change shifting the meaning of a word by associating impressions

from one sense with sensations from another, e.g., warm color.

syntagmatic change Language change resulting from the influence of one unit on nearby

units before or after it, e.g., assimilation or dissimilation.

syntax The part of a language system or description concerned with arranging words within

constructions, distinguished from morphology.

synthetic Of a language that depends on inflections as signals of grammatical structure.

system A set of interconnected parts forming a complex whole, specifically in language,

grammatical, lexical, and phonological units and their relationships to one another.

taboo The social prohibition of a word or subject.

tempo The pace of speech, in which the main impression is of speed, but an important

factor is the degree of casual assimilation versus full articulation of sounds.

tense inflection Verb inflection expressing time.

tense vowel A vowel made with relatively taut tongue muscles.

thematic vowel A vowel suffixed to an Indo-European root to form a stem.

thorn A letter of the runic alphabet (þ

) and its development in the Old English alphabet.

tilde A diacritic (˜) used in writing some languages, as in Spanish señor.

Tocharian A branch of Indo-European formerly spoken in central Asia.

transfer of meaning A semantic change altering the kinds of referents of a word as by

metaphor, metonymy, etc.

translation The representation of the meanings of the words in one language by those in

another.

298

glossary

transliteration The representation of the symbols of one writing system by those of

another.

trigraph A combination of three letters to represent a single sound, as tch in itch

represents [č].

typological classification A grouping of languages based on structural similarities and

differences rather than genetic relations.

ultimate source The earliest etymon known for a word (cf. direct source).

umlaut or mutation The process of assimilating a vowel to another sound in a following

syllable; also the changed vowel that results; also dieresis.

uninflected genitive A genitive without an ending to signal the case.

uninflected plural A plural identical in form with the singular, e.g., deer.

unmarked word A word whose meaning lacks a semantic limitation present in marked

words, as horse is unmarked for sex whereas stallion and mare are both marked.

unreleased Of a stop, without explosion in the place of articulation where the stoppage is

made.

unrounded or spread vowel A vowel made with the corners of the lips retracted so the lips

are against the teeth.

unrounding Change from a rounded to an unrounded vowel.

unstressed Of a syllable or vowel, having little prominence.

Ural-Altaic A hypothesized language family including Uralic and Altaic.

Uralic A family of languages including Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic.

usage The choice among options when the choice is thought to be important; also the study

of or concern for such choice.

Uto-Aztecan A language family of Central America and western North America.

velar Involving the soft palate or velum; also a sound made by touching the tongue against

the velum.

verb A major part of speech with the class meaning of acting, existing, or equating.

verbal noun A noun derived from a verb.

Verner’s Law An explanation of some apparent exceptions to the First Sound Shift.

virgule or slash A diagonal line (/) used in pairs to enclose phonemic transcriptions.

vocabulary The stock of words of a language.

vocalization Change from a consonant to a vowel.

vocative A case of nouns typically used to address a person.

vogue word A word in fashionable or faddish use.

voice The vibration of the vocal cords and the sound produced by that vibration; also a

grammatical category of verbs, relating the subject of the verb to the action as actor

(active voice in “I watched”) or as affected (passive voice in “I was watched”).

VO language A language in which objects follow their verbs.

vowel A speech sound made without constriction and serving as the center of a syllable.

Vulgar Latin Ordinary spoken Latin of the Roman Empire.

weak declension A Germanic noun or adjective declension in which the consonant [n]was

prominent.

weak verb A Germanic verb whose principal parts were formed by adding a dental suffix.

glossary

299

wedge See haček.

West Germanic A subbranch of the Germanic languages including German, Dutch, and

English.

West Saxon The Old English dialect of Wessex.

Whorf hypothesis A proposal that the language we use affects the way we respond to the

world.

word A segment of sound (or its graphic representation) that stands for a meaning and

cannot be divided into smaller such parts that can have other such segments freely

inserted between them.

word order The sequence in which words occur as a signal of grammatical structure.

world English English as used around the world, with all of its resulting variations; also the

common features of international standard English.

writing The representation of speech in visual form.

wynn A letter (ƿ) of the runic alphabet and its development in the Old English alphabet.

yogh A letter shape (ȝ) used in writing Middle English.

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Index of Modern English

Words and Affixes

Terms followed by a hyphen are prefixes; terms preceded by a hyphen are suffixes.

A

aftereffect, 230

a, 165

aftermath, 230

a-, 230

afternoon, 230

abdomen, 251

ageism, 233

abed, 179

aglet, 206

abide, 171

agnostic, 252

ablaut, 261

agri-, 234

a-bleeding, 179

-aholic, 234

aboard, 179, 230

a-hunting, 179, 230

abode, 171

aide-de-camp, 257

abominably, 218

aikido, 264

academic freedom, 261

ain’t, 177

accessorize, 233

air kiss, 227

accouchement, 215

air rage, 227

acronym, 252

-al, 232

acute, 237

al dente, 259

ad, 235

albino, 259

adagio, 259

alchemy, 262

address, 243

alcohol, 263

administer, 254

alcove, 263

administration, 254

ale, 249

admire, 209

alembic, 262

admit, 251

Alfred, 229

adobe, 258

algebra, 263

advice, 267

algorism, 262

aesthetic, 194

alibi, 187

affluence, 201

alive, 230

afield, 179

alkali, 262

after, 183, 247

all that, 217

after-, 230

allegory, 252

301

302

index

allegro, 259

archaeology, 194

allergic, 187

Archie Fisher snow, 241

allergy, 187

architecture, 201

alligator, 258

are, 176

ally, 242

area, 251

almanac, 262

aren’t, 177

almanack, 193

aria, 259

alms, 238

aristocracy, 252

alone, 237

arm, 198

altar, 250

armada, 258

alto, 259

armadillo, 258

aluminum, 191

armour, 193

am, 176

Armsgate, 240

amah, 202

army, 255, 267

amateur, 257

arras, 244

amber, 262

art, 176

ambiance, 220

artichoke, 259

amen, 263

artificial snow, 241

Americanize, 233

-ary, 192

amigo, 234

as, 169, 229

ampere, 243

aside, 230

ample, 191

ask, 177, 183, 191–192

an, 165

asleep, 179

-an, 242

astronaut diaper, 207

anaemic, 194

ate, 174, 190

-ance, 256

-ateria, 234

anchor, 249

atlas, 244

anchorperson, 221

attorney, 254

anchovy, 258

aunt, 197

andante, 259

author, 193

anemia, 252

authorize, 233

anesthesia, 252

auto, 235

angle, 187

autobiography, 240

angry, 185

autobus, 240

angst, 261

autocade, 240

anime, 264

autocamp, 240

another, 165

autocar, 240

answer, 232

autocracy, 252

an’t, 177

autograph, 240

-ant, 256

autohypnosis, 240

ante-, 232

automobile, 185, 240

antelope, 161

autumn, 184

anthropoid, 252

avatar, 264

anti-, 232–233

avocado, 258

antiabortion, 232

Avon, 252

antiaircraft, 232

aware, 232

anti-Catholic, 232

awfully, 217

anticlimax, 232

AWOL, 236

antidote, 232

azimuth, 262

anti-Federalist, 232

azure, 263

antipathy, 232

antisaloon, 232

B

antislavery, 232

babbitt, 244

antitobacco, 232

babel, 244

anyone, 221, 230

babu, 202, 264

apartheid, 260

baby boomer, 227

aphrodisiac, 244

baby carriage, 186

apostle, 250

baby-sit, 227, 239

apparatchik, 266

baby sitter, 231, 239

appraise, 214

bacchanal, 244

a-praying, 179

back, 242

aquacade, 240

backwoods, 184, 186

index

303

bacon, 207

behemoth, 263

badger, 252

beholden, 175

baggage, 185

beleaguer, 260

baksheesh, 202, 263

believe, 230

balcony, 259

belittle, 186

bald, 217

bend, 172

baldheaded, 230

beneath, 230

baleful, 231

Benedick, 244

ballet, 257

bequeath, 174

balloon, 259

better, 242

balsam, 250

between, 230

bamboo, 265

beyond, 230

banana, 265

bfn, 237

Band-Aid, 244

bhang, 202

bandanna, 264

bid, 174

bandit, 259

bikeathon, 240

bangle, 264

billingsgate, 244

banjo, 265

billion, 186

banshee, 253

billy, 244

banyan, 202

billycock, 244

banzai, 264

bind, 173

baptize, 194

bio, 235

barbarous, 252

bio-, 240

barbecue, 258

biocontrol, 240

bargain-hunt, 239

bioethics, 240

bargain hunter, 239

biological, 240

bark, 173

biotechnology, 240

barley, 210

bird, 183, 197, 247

barn, 210

Birmingham, 228

baron, 255

birth, 215

barracuda, 258

bit, 171, 252

baseball, 230

bite, 171

basket, 191

bitten, 171

bass, 191

black ball or blackball, 228

bastard, 191

black board or blackboard, 227

bathroom, 215

blarney, 244, 253

baton, 257

blatherskite, 206

bayonet, 244

blinds, 186

bayou, 266

blitz, 261

bazaar, 263

blizzard, 186

be, 170, 176, 178, 247

blog, 235

be-, 230

blood diseases, 216

bear, 173

bloodmobile, 240

beat, 175

bloodthirsty, 230

beaten, 175

bloody, 231

beatnik, 234, 262

bloomer, 243

beau, 257

blotto, 234

beautician, 232

blowgun, 230

beautifullest, 164

bluegrass, 230

bedlam, 244

bluf, 186

beef, 255

blurb, 187

beeline, 186

BM, 236

been, 190

BO, 236

beer, 249

boat, 202

beer garden, 262

boatswain, 229

began, 173

bobby, 243

begin, 172

bobwhite, 225

begonia, 243

bock, 261

begun, 173

boffo, 234

behalf, 230

bog, 253

behavior pattern, 219

boil, 255

behaviour, 193

bolero, 258

304

index

bolshevik, 266

brunch, 239

Bomfog, 237

brunette, 257

bonanza, 258

brung, 173

boodle, 261

brut, 262

bookmark, 209

buckaroo, 258

bookmobile, 240

Buckinghamgate, 240

boom, 260

buckra, 265

boor, 213, 260

budgetwise, 233

boot camp flu, 207

budgie, 265

boot, 209

buffalo, 161

booze, 260

bump, 225

bore, 173

buncombe, 244

borne, 173

bungalow, 264

borzoi, 266

bunkum, 186

boss, 216, 261

buoy, 260

bossa nova, 259

burdock, 193

Boston, 229

bureau, 257

bottom, 247

burger, 240, 261

bottom line, 220

burglar, 238

bottoms up, 261

burgle, 238

bougainvillea, 243

burn, 173

bouillon, 257

burp, 225

boulevard, 257

burr, 183

bound, 173

burst, 173

bourbon, 244

bus, 186, 235

bow, 172

businessman, 228

bowdlerize, 233, 243

but, 198, 242, 247

bower, 213, 218

butcher, 231

bowery, 261

butler, 231, 238

bowie, 243

butter, 249

bowlegged, 231

buz, 227

bowline, 260

bylaw, 253

bowsprit, 260

bowwow, 225

C

Boy Scout, 227

cab, 235

boycott, 243

cabal, 263

bra, 235

cabala, 263

braak, 227

caboose, 261

brack, 227

-cade, 240

braid, 173

cadenza, 259

brandy, 260

cafe, 257

bratwurst, 261

cafeteria, 187

braunschweiger, 261

cafetorium, 239

bravo, 259

cairn, 253

bread, 194, 253

Caister, 250

break, 172–173, 242

cakethon, 240

break down or breakdown, 187, 230, 242

calaboose, 258

breakfast, 229

calculation, 209

brethren, 161

caliber, 263

brew, 172

calibre, 193

brigade, 255

calico, 244

brigadier, 255

calliope, 244

bring, 173

calm, 191

broadcast, 227, 228

calque, 213

broccoli, 259

cambric, 260

brochure, 257

came, 173

brogue, 253

camellia, 243

broil, 255

camouflage, 257

broke, 172

camp, 250

broken, 172

camphor, 262

bronco, 258

camporees, 239

Bronx cheer, 227

can, 177, 188

index

305

cancer, 216

chalk, 249

candle, 249

chamber, 257

candy, 264

chamois, 257

cannibal, 258

champagne, 244, 257

cannot, 191

champion, 257

can’t, 191

chance, 191, 257

cantata, 259

chancellor, 254

canter, 244

change, 257

canto, 259

chant, 257

canyon, 184, 258

chaos, 252

caoutchouc, 212

chaparral, 258

capon, 254

chaperon, 257

captain, 255

Chapman, 249

car, 185

chaps, 258

carat, 263

chapter, 255

caravan, 263

char, 264

caraway, 263

character, 252

carburetor, 191

charge, 257

cardigan, 243

charisma, 220

Cardinal-wise, 233

charismatic, 220

cargo, 258

Charles, 239

Carlisle, 252

chase, 257

carnival, 259

chaste, 257

Carolina, 191

chattel, 255, 257

Carolus, 239

chauffeur, 257

carouse, 261

chauvinism, 243

carriage, 257

cheap, 249

carryings-on, 230

cheapen, 249

cartoon, 259

cheapjack, 244

carve, 173

cheapo, 234

cashmere, 244

Cheapside, 249

casino, 259

cheat, 201

cask, 258

check, 193, 257

casket, 215

checker, 263

cassock, 193

checkmate, 263

castanet, 258

checkup, 242

castle, 254

cheddar, 244

Castor, 250

cheerio, 234

cat, 211

cheese, 249

catalog, 194

cheeseburger, 240

catalpa, 184, 266

chef, 256

catawba, 184

Chepstow, 249

Catch-22, 245

cheque, 193

cattle, 255

cherry, 238

caucus, 187

cherub, 263

caudal, 210

chess, 248, 263

cavalcade, 240

chest, 249

CD, 236

Chester, 250

-ce, 193

chesterfield, 243

censure, 213

chest of drawers, 241

center, 252

chevron, 257

center back, 227

chew, 172

centre, 193

chic, 257

ch, 256

Chicana, 258

ch-, 249

Chicano, 234, 258

-ch, 230

chi-chi, 257

chagrin, 191

chicken burger, 240

chair, 242

chid, 171

chairperson, 221

chidden, 171

chaise, 238

chide, 171

chaise lounge, 241, 257

chief, 256

chakra, 264

chiffon, 257

306

index

chiffonier, 257

clove, 172

chignon, 257

cloven, 172

ch’i-kung, 264

clump, 225

childhood, 231

clung, 172

childish, 231

coach, 266

children, 161

cobalt, 261

chili, 258

cockroach, 241, 258

China, 212

cocktail, 187

china, 244

cocoa, 258

chintz, 264

coffee, 263, 266

chipmunk, 266

coffee clutch, 262

chiropractor, 232

coffeeless, 232

chit, 202

coffin, 215

chivalry, 257

coin, 249

chlorine, 252

coinage, 249

chocoholic, 240

cold, 164

chocolate, 258

coleslaw, 260

choo-choo, 225

collar, 192

choose, 172

collect, 251

chop suey, 264

colleen, 253

chortle, 239

-coln, 252

chose, 172

cologne, 244

chosen, 172

colonel, 255

chow, 264

colony collapse disorder, 207

chowder, 258

colour, 193

chow mein, 264

combe, 252

Christmas, 229

combo, 234

chronicle, 252

come, 173

church, 252

comedy, 252

churl, 214

comet, 250

chute, 257

comfort station, 215

chutzpah, 262

commandant, 257

ciao, 259

commandeer, 260

cider, 193

commando, 260

cigar, 258

commercial, 242

cigarette, 257

commit, 251

cinch, 258

commodore, 260

cipher, 193, 262

communiqué, 257

circle, 250

compensate, 251

city, 250

complete, 251

clan, 253

complex, 219

clapboard, 229

comprehension, 212

claspt, 194

compulsive, 219

class, 191

compulsive criminal, 219

classic, 191

compulsive drinker, 219

classical, 191

comrade, 227

classicism, 191

comstockery, 243

classify, 191

con-, 233, 256

clean, 225

concertize, 233

clear, 211

concerto, 259

clear-sounding, 211

condition, 216

cleave, 172

confinement, 215

clergy, 255

connect, 194

cleric, 248

connection, 194

clericals, 242

connexion, 194

clerk, 191, 248

connoisseur, 257

cliché, 257

contact, 242

client, 251

contend, 267

climb, 173

contracts, 243

cling, 172

Contragate, 240

cloak, 252

contralto, 259

cloudburst, 187

conviction, 251

index

307

cookie, 260

cummerbund, 263

cookout, 230

cupboard, 229

coon, 237

cupola, 259

cooter, 265

curb, 193

copper, 244

curly, 249

copter, 236

custodian, 216

cordovan, 258

cut, 242

cordwain, 258

cute, 237

corn, 210

Cutex, 225

Cornwall, 252

cuticle, 225

corollary, 191

cycle, 252

corporal, 255

cyder, 193

corpse, 215

cypher, 193

corral, 258

czar, 266

corridor, 259

czardom, 232

Cosa Nostra, 259

cot, 264

D

cotton, 262

dachshund, 261

cotton mill, 210

Dacron, 224

could, 177

dad, 209

count, 214

dada, 210

countess, 255

daddy, 210

country, 254

daddy-o, 234

coupe, 257

daddy track, 227

couper, 257

dahlia, 243

coupon, 257

daisy, 229

courage, 257

damascene, 244

court, 254

Damascus, 244

cow, 161, 255

damask, 244

coxswain, 228

damson, 244

crab, 241

dance, 177, 183, 191

crabbed, 231

dare, 177

crag, 253

daredevil, 230

cranberry, 260

darkle, 238

crash, 187, 212

darkling, 238

crass, 191

data, 251

crayfish, 241

date, 24

crazy, 219

date rape, 227

credaholic, 240

daughter, 247

creep, 172

davenport, 243

crematorium, 232

de-, 232–233, 256

crepe, 257

debark, 234

crepuscule, 206

debris, 257

crescendo, 259

debunk, 234

crescent, 218

debureaucratize, 234

crew, 175

debus, 234

crime, 255

debut, 257

criticism, 213, 233

debutante, 259

criticize, 232

deck, 184, 260

crochet, 257

decline, 250

crope, 172

decontaminate, 234

crore, 202

decor, 257

crosswise, 233

decorum, 251

crow, 175

deer, 161, 210

crowd, 172

defender, 237

crowed, 175

defense, 193, 237

cruise, 260

defrost, 234

cruller, 260

dehumidify, 234

crumb, 253

deinsectize, 234

cryotorium, 232

delicatessen, 261

crystal, 250

delirium, 251

cuckoo, 225

deluxe, 257

308

index

delve, 173

doberman(n) pinscher, 261

democracy, 208, 252

dock, 260

demolition engineer, 216

doctor, 193

demon, 250

doctoral, 232

demoralize, 233

docu-, 234

denim, 244

doesn’t, 177

denouement, 257

dog, 247

deplane, 234

do-gooder, 231

depot, 258

dollar, 260

depth, 231

-dom or -dom, 231, 250

deratizate, 234

domino, 258

derby (hat), 243

Don Juan, 244

Derby, 253

don’t, 177

derrick, 243

doom, 231

derringer, 243

dope, 261

dervish, 263

Doppelgänger, 261

deserts, 213

dot bomb, 227

designer label, 242

dot com, 227

designer water, 242

dottle, 206

desperado, 258

double-date, 227

detour, 257

douche, 257

detrain, 234

dove, 171

Devon, 252

Dover, 252

devotional, 242

down, 247, 252

dewater, 234

downcast, 230

dewax, 234

downsize, 227

dexterous, 209

dragon, 252

dhoti, 202

drake, 220

diarrhoea, 194

drama, 252

die, 214

drank, 172

diet, 252

draw, 175

different to, 188

drawn, 175

diffidence, 219

dread, 175

dig, 173

dream, 253

dignity, 255

drew, 175

digress, 251

drink, 172

dig you, 198

drive, 171, 242

dilapidated, 209

drive-by shooting, 227

dilemma, 252

driven, 171

dilettante, 259

drive-through teller, 242

diminuendo, 259

drove, 171

dimwitted, 230

drugwise, 233

dinghy, 202, 264

drunk, 172

dirge, 251

duck, 220, 260, 161

dis-, 232, 234, 256

duet, 259

disadvantaged, 216

duffel or duffle, 260

disassemble, 234

duke, 255

disciple, 227

dumbs, 234

discuss, 251

dumfound, 239

dish, 249

dunce, 243

dishpan hands, 191

dungaree, 264

disincentive, 234

dunk, 262

Disneyland, 228

duo, 259

disport, 237

durbar, 264

dissaver, 234

Durham, 228

dissolve, 251

durst, 177

diva, 259

Durward, 229

dive, 171

DVD, 237

dived, 171

dwell, 253

DNA, 237

DWEM, 237

do, 231

dynasty, 191

index

309

E

ensemble, 257

e-, 240

-ent, 256

ear bud, 227

enthusiasm, 252

Earl, 214

enthusiastic, 209

earl, 253, 255

entree, 257

earmarxist, 207

envoy, 257

earnings, 242

epicure, 243

earth, 211, 247

epithet, 252

earthly king, 227

epoch, 252

earthscape, 260

equal, 251

easel, 260

-er, 164, 193, 231, 238–239

Eastcheap, 249

eradicate, 209

easy, 201

-ere, 250

eat, 174

error, 193

eaten, 174

ersatz, 261

e-business, 240

-ery, 192

eco-, 240

-es, 160

ecofreak, 240

-ese, 232

ecology, 240

esquire, 237

e-commerce, 240

essence, 251

ecosphere, 240

Essex, 229

ecotourism, 240

-est, 164

ecstasy, 252

estate, 255

-ed, 230–231

e-tail, 239

edelweiss, 261

Ethelbert, 229

Edinburgh, 228

e-ticket, 240

editor, 251

etiquette, 237, 257

educator, 216

eucatastrophe, 232

Edward, 165

Euro-, 234

-ee, 234

everybody, 188, 222

egghead, 187

everyone, 188, 221

eggwich, 240

evolution, 190

eidolon, 206

ewe, 220

either, 232

ex-, 232–233, 256

elbow, 242

-ex, 225

elder, 242

example, 191

Eleanor, 165

exceptional, 216

electric, 252

exceptional child, 216

electrocute, 187

excessively, 218

electronic, 240

exchequer, 263

elite, 257

exhibitionism, 219

’em, 168

expertise, 220

e-mail, 240

exploding ARM, 207

embankment, 258

extermination engineer, 216

embargo, 258

extra, 235

embonpoint, 257

eye candy, 227

emcee, 186

eyes, 161

eminenter, 164

emperor, 193

F

empowerment, 220

facility, 216

-en, 231, 242

fair, 164

enamor, 255

faire, 257

-ence, 256

fakakta, 262

enceinte, 215

fakir, 263

encore, 257

fall, 175, 184

encyclopaedia, 194

fallen, 175

engineer, 216

falsetto, 259

English, 231

fan, 187

Englishman, 228

fancy, 191

engrave, 175

fantasy, 252

enough, 232

fanzine, 239

310

index

far, 191

flow, 175

farad, 243

flower, 253

fare, 175

flown, 172

fart, 227

flu, 235

fastathon, 240

flurry, 239

fate, 202

flush, 239

father, 191, 197, 209, 247

fly, 172

father figure, 219

foe, 247

father image, 219

fold, 175

faugh, 226

folio, 251

favour, 193

folk, 161

fax, 235

-folk, 228

fear, 212, 247

Folkestone, 228

feather, 194

follicularly challenged, 217

feet, 161

foodism, 233

feldspar, 261

foodshed, 207

feline, 211

fool, 255

fell, 175

foolproof, 230

fellow, 253

foot, 211, 242

fellowship, 231

foo yong, 264

felly, 206

for, 247

fence, 193, 237

for-, 230

fender, 237

forbade, 174

feng shui, 264

forbid, 174, 230

fertilize, 233

forecastle, 229

-fest, 262

forehead, 229

festoonwise, 233

foreman, 221

few, 199

forerun, 230

fey, 213

forever stamp, 207

fez, 266

forlorn, 230

fiancé(e), 257

forlorn hope, 260

fictitious, 251

formals, 242

fight, 173

forsake, 175

fill in, 242

forsaken, 175

filling station, 187

forsook, 175

filmdom, 231

forswear, 230

filmnik, 262

forte, 259

finale, 259

forthcoming, 227

finalize, 233

fortuitous, 213

find, 173

fortunate, 213

finger, 242

fought, 173

fire-eater, 228

found, 173

firm, 259

foundation-nik, 234

first floor, 186

four, 197

first-rate, 230

fowls, 161

fish, 161

foyer, 257

fishes, 161

fragile, 190

flair, 257

frankfurter, 244, 261

flash, 225

freedom, 231

flat panel, 227

freeze, 172

flavour, 193

froze, 172

flay, 175

freight, 260

flee, 172

fresco, 259

flew, 172

fret, 174

flick, 225

friend, 247

flight attendant, 221

friendliness, 231

fling, 172

frijoles, 258

flip, 225

frijoles refritos, 258

flite, 267

fringe-benefitwise, 233

flop, 225

fritz, 262

floppy, 209

frolic, 260

flotilla, 258

from, 247

index

311

front-page, 227

gin mill, 210

frozen, 172

gingham, 265

fruit, 255

ginkgo, 264

fruition, 213

ginseng, 264

fry, 255

giraffe, 263

fubar, 236

give, 174, 254

fugue, 259

given, 174

fulfill, 227–228

glacier, 257

full, 213, 217

glad, 212

fulsome, 213

Gladstone, 212

furlough, 260

glamorize, 233

fuselage, 257

glance, 191

fusional, 232

glasnost, 266

glass, 183, 191

G

glass ceiling, 227

gabfest, 262

glide, 172

gage, 194, 255

global weirding, 207

gainsay, 230

gluon, 234

galleon, 258

gnaw, 175

galore, 253

gneiss, 261

galumph, 239

go, 105

gangster, 231

go back on, 187

gaol, 193

go (board game), 264

garble, 263

go-between, 228

garden, 262

god, 209

Gargantuan, 244

godfather, 259

garlic, 229

godlike, 230

gasoline, 186

godly, 230

gate, 199, 240, 251

Godzilla, 264

-gate, 234, 240

golden, 231

gauze, 244

gondola, 259

gave, 174

goober, 265

gazette, 259

google, 245

ge-, 232

gorgonzola, 259

gear, 254

gorilla, 265

geese, 161

gorillae, 265

geisha, 264

gorno, 207

geld, 254

got, 173, 192

gemütlich, 261

gotten, 173, 184

generation X, Y, etc., 227

goulash, 266

genre, 257

government, 254

genteel, 256

governor, 193, 210, 253

gentle, 256

goy, 263

gentleman, 228

Grace, 162

gentlemanlike, 230

gradual, 251

gentlemanly, 230

graham (flour), 243

gents, 216

grain, 210

gerrymander, 243

grasp, 212

gestalt, 261

grass, 191

gesundheit, 262

graviton, 234

get, 173, 184, 254

greedy, 231, 247

geyser, 254

green house or greenhouse, 228

ghee, 202

Greenwich, 229

gherkin, 260

grievous, 164

ghetto, 259

Grimsby, 253

giant, 250

grind, 173

giddy, 209

grindstone, 229

gigo, 237

gringo, 234

gill, 254

gripe, 172

gimp, 260

grippe, 257

gin, 260

groat, 260

gin and tonic, 208

grotto, 259

312

index

ground, 173, 211

hat, 191

ground floor, 186

hatchback, 227

groundhog, 266

hate, 247

ground zero, 227

have, 247

group, 194

havok, 193

grovel, 193

hazard, 262

groveled, 193

he, 165, 167, 176, 221–222, 247

groveler, 193

head, 242

groveling, 194, 238

head bookkeeper, 242

grovelled, 194

head hunter or headhunter, 228

groveller, 194

health, 231

grubstreet, 244

healthwise, 233

guarantee, 255

heap, 260

gudgeon, 206

heartbreaking, 230

guilder, 260

heave, 175

guilt complex, 219

hector, 244

guinea, 244

he’er, 222

guitar, 258

held, 175

gumbo, 265

heliport, 236

gung-ho, 264

helix, 235

gunny, 264

help, 173, 216, 247

guru, 264

hemorrhage, 194

gush, 239

hemorrhoids, 194

guy, 243

hemstitch, 230

gynaecology, 194

henceforth, 228

henna, 263

H

her, 162, 165, 168, 170

hacienda, 258

herculean, 244

haemorrhage, 194

herd complex, 219

ha-ha, 225–226

here, 168, 267

haiku, 264

hermaphrodite, 244

hairy-chested, 230

hers, 165, 167

hajji, 206

hew, 175

half, 191

hewn, 176

hall, 218

hex, 262

hallelujah, 263

hick, 244

-ham, 228

hid, 171

hamburger, 239–240, 244, 261

hidden, 171

hamster, 261

hide, 171

hanafuda, 264

high brow or highbrow, 187, 228

hand, 211, 242

high school, 227

handbook, 267

high tech, 235

handful, 231

higher-up, 228

handiwork, 232

highland, 228

handlebar mustache, 242

highlight, 228

hand-to-mouth, 230

highwayman, 228

hang, 175

hijackee, 234

hangar, 257

hill, 247, 252

hangover, 261

hillbilly, 244

hanker, 260

him, 165, 170

Hansen’s disease, 216

hinder, 253

happy, 191

hinterland, 261

happy-go-lucky, 230

hir, 168

hara-kiri, 264

hiree, 234

harbor, 250–251

his, 162, 165, 167

harbour, 193

history, 252

harem, 263

hit, 167, 253

harm, 247

HIV, 236

harmonize, 232

ho-ho, 225–226

harmony, 252

hold, 175

hashish, 263

-holic, 240

hassock, 193

homburg, 244

index

313

homely, 230

imho, 237

homemade, 230

IMing, 237

homestead, 253

imitate, 251

homeward, 231

immensely, 218

homoeopathy, 194

to impact, 242

homonym, 252

impartial, 208

-hood, 231

impasse, 257

hoodoo, 265

impudentest, 164

hoop, 260

in, 188

hoosegow, 258

in a family way, 215

hoover, 244

incognito, 259

hop, 260

incunabulum, 206

hopeless, 231

indifferent, 164, 208

horde, 266

indoors, 230

hormonal, 232

-ine, 194

horrible, 255

inferno, 259

horridly, 218

inflect, 194

horror, 193

inflection, 194

hors d’oeuvre, 257

inflexion, 194

horseman, 228

influenza, 259

hot bed or hotbed, 228

Info-gate, 240

hot dog, 261

-ing, 231

hound, 210

in group, 242

house, 247

innkeeper, 249

housebreak, 239

input, 220

housebroken, 239

insane, 186

househusband, 221

insanity, 219

housekeep, 239

instant, 251

housekeeper, 239

intelligentsia, 266

housekeeping, 239

inter-, 232

housespouse, 221

interface, 220

housewife, 221

interferon, 234

HOV, 236

intermission, 186

hove, 175

Internet café, 227

hula, 265

interval, 186

hump, 225

into, 228

hung, 175

invalid, 257

hunger-starve, 211

Irangate, 240

husband, 246

is, 176

hussar, 266

-isc, 250

hussy, 229

-ise, 194

hype, 235

-ish, 231–232

hypo, 235

isinglass, 260

Hyundai, 265

islet, 253

-ism, 233

I

it, 165, 167

I, 17, 165, 169, 176, 247

italic, 244

-ian, 232, 242, 250

-ite, 194

-(i)ana, 232

it’ll, 178

-ibus, 235

its, 165, 167

ice cream, 227

it’s, 167

icebox, 228

-ity, 256

Iceland, 228

-ive, 194

iceman, 228

-ize, 194, 232–233

I-Ching, 264

-ician, 232

J

idiosyncrasy, 252

jack, 213, 244

iffy, 232

jackal, 266

ill, 185

jackass, 244

IM, 237

jack-in-the-box, 244

image, 219

jack-of-all-trades, 244

imaginary, 251

jail, 193

314

index

janitor, 216, 251

king, 255

jaunty, 256

kingdom, 231

java, 244

kirsch, 261

jazz, 197, 265

kismet, 266

jazzy, 232

kit, 260

jeans (pants), 244

kitchen, 249

Jehovah (Yahweh), 263

Kleenex, 225

jeremiad, 243

klutz, 262

jerrican, 206

knapsack, 260

Jesus, 201

knave, 213

jigger, 265

knead, 174

jinn, 263

knight, 214

JOBS, 237

knockwurst or knackwurst, 261

jocose, 251

know-how, 187

john (toilet), 244

Kodak, 224

johnny, 244

kopeck, 266

johnny-on-the-spot, 244

Koreagate, 240

jovial, 244

kosher, 263

joy, 253

kowtow, 264

joyful, 260

kraal, 260

jubilee, 263

Kriss Kringle, 262

judge, 255

kudos, 252

judo, 264

kulfi, 202

juggernaut, 264

kumquat, 264

juggler, 254

kung fu, 264

jujitsu, 264

kvetch, 262

juke, 265

kyphotic, 206

jungle, 264

juniper, 260

L

junta, 258

laboratory, 191

jury, 255

labour, 193

laconic, 244

K

lade, 175

Kabbalah, 263

laden, 175

kaffeeklatsch, 262

Ladies, 216

kahuna, 265

la dolce vita, 259

kaiser, 243

lady, 255

kamikaze, 264

ladybird, 163

kangaroo, 265

Lady Bountiful, 244

kaput, 262

Lady Chapel, 163

karaoke, 264

Lady Day, 163

karate, 264

lager, 261

karma, 264

lagoon, 259

kedgeree, 202

laid, 174

keel, 254

laid-back, 227

kerb, 193

lain, 174

Keswick, 228

laissez faire, 257

ketchup, 264

lanai, 265

kettle, 249

land, 247

key ‘reef’, 258

landau, 261

khaki, 263

landscape, 260

khan, 266

language, 257

kibitz, 262

lapis, 209

kiddo, 234

lapse, 251

kilt, 254

laptop, 227

kimchee, 265

largo, 259

kimchi, 265

lariat, 258

kimono, 264

lasagna, 259

kind, 161

laser, 237

kindergarten, 262

lass, 191

kindle, 254

lasso, 258

kine, 161

latitudinarian, 206

index

315

laugh, 175

little girls’ room, 215

launch, 265

liverwurst, 261

lava, 259

loch, 253

lavaliere, 243

loess, 261

law, 253

logbook, 227

lay, 174

loggy, 260

layperson, 221

loin, 207

lazy, 217

lol, 237

leaden, 231

London, 252

leap, 175

lone, 237

learnedness, 231

lonesome, 231

leg, 215, 242

long day, 211

legato, 259

loo, 216

legitimate, 251

look, 242

lei, 265

loony, 232

leisure, 190

loose-jointed, 227

leitmotiv, 261

loot, 264

lem, 237

lord, 229, 255

lemon, 263

lordship, 231

length, 211

lose, 172

lengthwise, 233

Lothario, 244

leprechaun, 253

loud, 211

leprosy, 216

loud speaker or loudspeaker, 228

-less, 231

love, 247

letter, 255

loved one, 215

letter carrier, 185

lowbrow, 187

levee, 258

luck, 260

lewd, 213

luggage, 185

Lewis Carroll, 239

lumberjack, 244

-li, 230

lump, 225

liaison, 257

lute, 262

library, 192, 251

Lutwidge, 239

libretto, 259

-ly, 230

-lic, 230

lynch, 243

lice, 161

lyre, 252

-lich, 230

-liche, 230

M

lie, 172, 174

macaroni, 259

liederkranz, 261

macaroon, 259

lieutenant, 255

Machiavellian, 244

life-stream, 207

machine, 252, 257

lifestyle, 219

machismo, 258

lighter, 260

macho, 258

lighter-than-air, 230

macintosh also mackintosh, 243

like, 188, 230

mackinaw, 244

likewise, 233

maculate, 206

limb, 215

mad, 185

limburger, 260

Madeira, 244, 259

limerick, 244, 257

madman, 230

limousine, 244, 257

madness, 219

Lincoln, 252

madras, 244

-liness, 232

madrigal, 259

-ling, 238

maestro, 259

lingerie, 257

Mafioso, 259

linguine, 259

magazine, 263

lion, 220

magic, 255

lioness, 220

magnesia, 244

liquid, 210

maharaja, 264

litchi, 264

maharani, 264

literature, 255

mahatma, 264

litre, 193

mail, 209

little boys’ room, 215

mailbox, 185

316

index

mailman, 185

meal, 210

maize, 210, 258

meander, 244

major, 255

measles, 234

make up or makeup, 228

meat, 201, 211

malapropism, 244

mechanical, 250

malaria, 259

mediator, 251

male, 255

medicine, 190, 251

mammoth, 266

medieval, 194

man, 221

medium, 251

man Friday, 244

meerschaum, 261

man-eating, 228

me-ism, 233

manga, 264

melee, 257

mangrove, 265

melt, 173

manhole, 230

memsahib, 202

manicotti, 259

men, 161

manly, 230

ménage, 257

manoeuvre, 193–194

mensch, 262

mantilla, 258

-ment, 256

mantra, 264

mental illness, 219

manual, 267

mentee, 234

maraschino, 259

mentor, 244

marathon, 240

menu, 257

margarita, 258

meow, 225

marketplace, 249

mercury, 244, 251

marquess, 255

mesa, 184, 258

marriage of convenience, 257

mescal, 258

Mars, 162

mesmerism, 244

marshal, 229

mesmerize, 233

mart, 260

mesquite, 258

martyr, 250

metaphor, 252

marvel, 255

mete, 174

Maryland, 228

metre, 193

masala, 202

mice, 161

mascot, 191

Middlesex, 229

masochism, 243

midriff, 215

masquerade, 191

might, 177

mass, 191, 250

Mildred, 229

massacre, 191

mile, 249

massage, 257

military, 192

master, 191, 216, 249

milk, 199

master of ceremonies, 186

milkman, 228

mastiff, 191

mill, 210

mate, 201

milliner, 244

maternal profiling, 207

millinery, 192

matin, 257

minaret, 263

matinee, 257

mind, 221

mattress, 262

mine, 165

matzo, 263

mini-, 234

maudlin, 243

miniature, 234, 259

maulstick, 260

mini black holes, 234

maverick, 243

minibus, 234

mavin, 262

minicam, 234

maxi-, 234

minicar, 234

may, 177

minicinema, 234

maybe, 187

miniconglomerate, 234

mayonnaise, 244

minilecture, 234

mayor, 255

minimall, 234

mazuma, 263

minimogul, 234

mazurka, 266

minirevolution, 234

M.C., 186, 242

mint, 249

me, 165, 169

mirror, 193, 255

mead, 249

mis-, 231

index

317

misalign, 231

N

miscellany, 191

-n plurals, 161, 176, 230

misdeed, 231

nabob, 202, 264

miserable, 250

naive, 257

miso, 264

nap, 260

mispronounce, 231–232

NASA, 237

mob, 235

nasty, 191

mobisode, 207

nation, 257

moccasin, 266

naturalize, 233

modem, 239

nature, 250

mogul, 263

nautch, 202

mohair, 263

navicular, 206

moisturize, 233

-nd, 173

molasses, 186, 238, 259

neatnik, 262

moment, 219

nebbish, 262

moment of truth, 259

Ned, 165

mommy track, 227

negligee, 257

monastery, 192, 250

negro, 258

moo, 225

neighbbour, 193

moon, 247

Nelly, 165

Moon Children, 216

nemesis, 244

moonscape, 260

neo-, 232

moose, 266

nephew, 190

morale, 257

-ness, 231

moralize, 233

neurotic, 219

more, 164

nevertheless, 228

moreover, 228

nice, 208, 214

morgue, 257

nickel, 261

morocco, 244

nicotine, 244

morphine, 244

-nik, 234, 262

mortician, 215, 232

nilon, 224

Moses, 162

Ninja loan, 207

mosquito, 258

nitty-gritty, 197

most, 164

nix, 262

motel, 239

noble, 255

mother, 247

nobody, 188

mother-in-law, 230

no-goodnik, 234, 262

motivationally

Noll, 165

challenged, 217

non-, 232, 234

motorcade, 240

nonavailability, 234

motor car, 185

nonbook, 234

motto, 259

noncandidate, 234

mought, 177

nonsick, 234

mourn, 173

noodle, 261

mouse, 209, 212

no one, 188

mouthful, 231

nope, 226

movieland, 228

Norfolk, 228

mow, 175

north, 247

mowe, 177

Northgate, 240

mown, 176

no-run, 224

Mrs. Grundy, 233

Norwich, 229

mudguard, 230

nosh, 262

mulatto, 258

nostril, 229

multi-, 232

notebook, 209

musick, 193

nothing, 197

musk, 263

notorious, 251

mustang, 258

NOW, 237

mutton, 255

now generation, 242

muzhik, 266

now king, 242

my, 165

-n’t, 177

myself, 228

nuance, 257

mystery, 252

nudnik, 262

318

index

nuron, 224

outgoing, 227

nutraceutical, 239

output, 220

nylon, 224

outside, 231

nymph, 252

outward, 231

overachievers, 216

O

overanxious, 230

oaken, 231

overdo, 227

oats, 158, 210

overgrown, 227

obbligato, 259

overhead, 230

obdurate, 251

overland, 230

obligatory, 192

oxen, 161

obligingness, 231–232

oxford (shoe or basket-weave

ocean, 253

cotton shirting), 244

odyssey, 244

oeconomy, 194

P

Oedipus complex, 219

pa, 210

oesophagus, 194

PAC, 237

off, 188

pachisi, 202

offense, 193

pack, 184

oh, 234

package, 185

ohm, 243

Pac-Man, 264

Oilgate, 240

paediatrician, 194

old man, 209

pagoda, 259

oligarchy, 252

painting, 242

Oliver, 165

pajamas or pyjamas, 193, 264

-ology, 233

pal, 264

ombudsman, 254

palaver, 259

omnibus, 235

palimony, 239

on, 188

palmetto, 258

-on, 234

panama, 244

onanism, 244

pander, 244

oncoming, 230

pan-fry, 230

one, 247

panic, 244

one-horse, 227

pantaloon, 243

only, 188

panties, 185

onslaught, 260

pants, 235

op-ed, 235

paparazzi, 259

opera, 259

pap, 207

opossum, 237, 266

paper, 212

oppose, 255

papergate, 240

-or, 193, 232

papoose, 266

orange, 262

pappy, 210

oratorio, 259

paprika, 266

orbit, 251

paradigm, 220

orchestra seat, 186

paradise, 263

orderly, 232

paradox, 252

organize, 194

park, 242

-orium, 232

parakeets, 265

Orlon, 224

pass, 191

-ory, 192

passage, 191

osculate, 206

passé, 257

ostracism, 233

passenger, 191

other, 165

passing, 164

otherwise, 233

passive, 191

ouch, 225

pastel, 191

our, 165

pasteurize, 232, 244

-our, 193

pater, 210

ours, 165

path, 177, 183, 191–192

out-, 231

pathos, 252

out of, 188, 228

patio, 258

outfield, 231

patronize, 233

outgo, 231

pause, 252

index

319

pea, 238

plunder, 260

pea jacket, 260

pocketful, 232

peacenik, 234, 262

poenology, 194

peak, 252

pogrom, 266

Peanutgate, 240

poinsettia, 244

pear, 250

Pokemon, 264

pease, 238

pokerholic, 240

pecan, 266

police, 257

peccadillo, 258

politician, 213

peer group, 220

politico, 234

peer pressure, 220

polka, 266

peewee, 225

Pollyanna, 233

pen, 212

poltergeist, 261

penchant, 257

polyhexamethyleneadipamide, 224

peninsula, 251

pompadour, 243

pepper, 249

poncho, 258

perestroika, 266

pongee, 264

perfect, 242

poodle, 261

perfume, 243

pooh, 226

pergola, 259

pooh-pooh, 226

perk, 235

pop, 235

person, 222

poppa, 210

personalitywise, 233

pops, 210

petro-, 234

populous, 251

pew, 226

popunder, 227

phaenomenon, 194

porcelain, 259

pharynx, 252

pork, 255

phenomenon, 252

port, 251

phew, 226

portico, 259

philosophy, 219

portmanteau, 239

phone, 235, 252

Portsmouth, 228

photo op, 235

possum, 237

physick, 193

post-, 232

piano, 259

postman, 185, 228

piazza, 259

postmaster, 228

picayune, 258

post office, 227

piccolo, 259

potato, 258

pickaninny, 259

potatochipoholic, 240

pickle, 260

pound, 249

Pickwickian, 244

powder room, 215

picnic, 257

powwow, 266

pig, 255

prairie, 184, 187, 258

pigheaded, 230

praise, 214

pigs, 161

praline, 258

pinder, 265

pre-, 232, 256

Ping-Pong, 244

preach, 255

pinto, 258

pregnant, 215

pinup, 230

premier, 191

pish, 226

premiere, 257

pishpash, 202

prenup, 235

pit, 260

presidentialism, 233

pitiful, 212

presto, 259

pizza, 259

pretense, 193

pizzicato, 259

pretzel, 261

PJs, 236

price, 249

place, 258

priesthood, 231

plaid, 253

prima donna, 259

plaster, 191, 250

prince, 255

plateau, 257

prison, 254

platonic, 244

private, 242

plaza, 258

pro-, 233

plow, 253

process, 190

320

index

prodigiously, 217

ran, 172

produce, 242

ranch, 258

profession, 216

rang, 172

program, 194

rant, 260

propel, 195

rapport, 257

propellant, 195

raspberry, 227

propelled, 195

ration, 257

propeller, 195

ravine, 257

propelling, 195

ravioli, 259

proposition, 242

razz, 235

protégé, 257

re-, 232, 234

psalm, 250

-re, 193

psalmist, 250

read, 175

pseudo-, 232

reading, 231

pshaw, 226

Reagangate, 240

psyche, 244

real estate, 227

psychological, 219

realtor, 232

psychology, 219

reap, 174

publick, 193

reason of state, 257

pueblo, 258

recitative, 259

pugh, 226

recivilianize, 234

pukka, 264

reckless, 231

Pullman, 243

recondition, 234

pulps, 212

recuse, 206

pulsar, 239

re-decontaminate, 234

pumpernickel, 261

Redeemer, 251

punaholic, 240

reek, 172

punctilio, 258

refried beans, 258

pundit, 264

refusednik, 234

Purdue, 229

regard, 255

putt-putt-athon, 240

regatta, 259

pyx, 206

register, 250

rehab, 235

Q

relate to, 219

qigong, 264

relation, 250

quadrant, 251

remember, 255

quarks, 245

repartee, 257

quartz, 261

repertoire, 257

quasar, 239

replica, 259

queen, 255

reservoir, 257

question, 255

rest, 197, 247

quidnunc, 206

rest room, 215

quiltathon, 240

restaurant, 257

quinine, 190

resuscitate, 251

quixotic, 244

returnee, 234

quota, 251

reveille, 257

revue, 257

R

rhapsody, 252

rabbi, 263

rheum, 252

Rabelaisian, 244

rhythm, 252

raccoon, 184, 237

rich, 252

racism, 233

riches, 238

radar, 237

ricksha, 264

radio, 187

ridden, 171

radiothon, 240

ride, 171, 247

rag, 253

right, 217, 230

ragged, 253

rightly, 230

railway, 185

righto, 234

railway station, 258

Rigsby, 253

raise (in salary), 186

ring, 172

ram, 220

rise, 171

-rama, 234

risen, 171

index

321

risqué, 257

Samsung, 265

roach, 241

samurai, 264

road rage, 227

Sands, 162

roast, 255

sandwich, 243

robber, 228

sang, 171–172

robin, 184

sangria, 258

rode, 171

sanitary engineer, 216

rodeo, 258

sanitize, 233

role model, 219

sank, 172

roman, 244

Santa Claus, 261

romance, 191, 244

sardonic, 244

Romish, 232

sari, 264

rondo, 259

sat, 174, 176

roof, 247

Satan, 263

rook, 263

sate, 174

rooty, 202

satrap, 263

rose, 171

satst, 176

ROTC, 236

sattest, 176

roué, 257

saturnine, 244

rouge, 257

sauerbraten, 261

rough, 242

sauerkraut, 261

round, 242

sauterne, 244

rover, 260

savage, 257

row, 176

savant, 257

royal, 255

save, 209

rubber, 212

savoir, 257

rube, 244

saw, 174

ruble, 266

Saxons, 229

rubric, 250

say, 201

rucksack, 261

scampi, 259

rue, 172

scathe, 253

rug, 254

scenario, 220

rumba, 265

Schadenfreude, 261

run, 172, 242

schedule, 191

rune, 254

schizophrenia, 219

rung, 172

schlemiel, 262

RVs, 237

schlep, 262

schlock, 262

S

schmaltz, 262

s-, 191

schmear, 262

-s, 176, 197, 226, 234, 238, 260

schnapps, 261

-s plurals, 161–162

schnitzel, 261

Sabbath, 263

schnozzle, 262

sable, 266

school, 102, 248

sack, 249

schottische, 261

sacrament, 255

schwa, 261

sacrifice, 255

scope, 259

sadism, 219, 244

scorch, 253

safe, 255

score, 253

saffron, 262

Scotch tape, 244

sage, 254

scot-free, 253

sahib, 264

scot tax, 253

sake, 264

scowl, 253

salary, 255

scrape, 174, 253

salarywise, 233

scribe, 251

sales resistance, 187

scrub, 253

saleswise, 233

-se, 193

salon, 257

sea, 247

saloon, 257

search engine, 227

samba, 265

search, 255

samovar, 266

seclude, 251

sample, 191

second, 255

322

index

second floor, 186

shirt, 253

secret, 255

shish kebab, 266

secretary, 192

shivaree, 258

securitywise, 233

shmo, 262

see, 174

shnook, 262

seed, 174

shoes, 161

seedy, 199

shone, 171

seen, 174

shook, 175

seersucker, 263

shore, 173

seethe, 172, 255

shorn, 173

seize, 255

short while, 211

seltzer, 261

should, 177–178

semester, 261

shoulder, 242

semi-, 232

shove, 172

seminar, 261

showerthon, 240

senator, 193

shrank, 172

senior citizens, 216

shrapnel, 243

sentence, 255

shrink, 172

sepoy, 202

shrub, 253

sepulchre, 193

shrunk, 172

seraph, 263

shtick, 262

sergeant, 255

shyness, 219

series, 251

sick, 164, 185, 216, 219

servant, 216, 229, 252

sickle, 249

server, 209

sicko, 234

set, 174

sidestep, 227

setback, 230

sidle, 238

set up, 242

sierra, 258

sexaholic, 240

siesta, 258

sex complex, 219

sign, 250

sexism, 233

silly, 214, 244

sexploitation, 239

silo, 258

shah, 263

silver, 212

shake, 175

simile, 251

shaken, 175

simon-pure, 244

shall, 178

simony, 244

shalwar, 202

sin, 255

shampoo, 202, 264

sinecure, 251

shamrock, 253

sinful, 231

shanghai, 244

sing, 171–172

shantung, 244

singer, 199

sharp, 211, 218

single, 255

shave, 175

sinister, 209, 214

shaven, 175

sink, 172

shawl, 263

Sir, 214

shay, 238

sire, 210

she, 165, 167, 176, 222

sirloin, 207

shear, 173

sit, 174, 176

-shed, 207

sit-down strike, 242

sheep, 161, 220, 255

sit-in, 228, 230, 242

shekel, 263

sits, 176

shem, 222

sitst, 176

sherbet, 263

sittest, 176

sheriff, 229

sitteth, 176

sherry, 244, 258

Sitzfleisch, 261

sherry wine, 238

skald, 254

shibboleth, 263

skate, 260

shillelagh, 253

sketch, 260

shin, 242

ski, 254

shine, 171

skill, 253

shingles, 234

skin, 253

-ship, 231

skipper, 260

index

323

skoal, 254

south, 247

skunk, 266

souvenir, 257

sky, 253

soviet, 266

slain, 175

sow, 176

slay, 175

sown, 176

sleazo, 234

soy(a), 264

sleep, 176, 201, 242

space, 211

sleepaholic, 240

spaghetti, 259

sleigh, 261

spam, 209

slew, 175

spamwich, 240

slicks, 212

span, 176

slid, 171

spaniel, 244

slidden, 171

spar, 236

slide, 171

spartan, 244

sling, 172

speak, 173, 247

slink, 172

speciesism, 233

slip up, 187

speech, 201

slogan, 253

speedster, 231

sloop, 260

spendaholic, 240

sloth, 231

spew, 172

slow down, 242

spin, 172, 242

slunk, 172

spinster, 231

sly, 253

spitz, 261

smart, 218

splash, 225

smart card, 227

split, 260

smarts, 234

spoke, 173

smearcase, 262

spoken, 173

smite, 171

spook, 261

smitten, 171

spool, 260

smog, 239

spoonerism, 244

smooth, 211

spoonful, 231

smorgasbord, 254

spoor, 260

smote, 171

sport, 237

smuggle, 260

sprang, 172

snafu, 236

spring, 172

snap, 260

sprout, 172

snark, 239

sprung, 172

snits, 262

spun, 172

snoop, 261

spurn, 173

snowcapped, 230

sputnik, 262, 266

soap, 235

squash, 266

sober, 255

squaw, 266

soccer mom, 227

squire, 237

social diseases, 216

squirrel, 190

socko, 234

staccato, 259

soda box, 241

stagedoor Johnny, 244

sodden, 172, 255

staircase, 186

sodomy, 244

stairs, 186

soft, 197

stairway, 186

solace, 255

stampede, 258

solo, 259

stand, 242

solon (legislator), 243

stand up to, 187

sombrero, 258

stank, 172

-some, 231

stanza, 259

somebody, 188, 228

starve, 173, 211

someone, 188, 221

state, 255

son, 247

station, 257

sonata, 259

status, 255

soprano, 259

steak burger, 240

sore, 217

steal, 173, 201

sots, 262

steel mill, 210

soup, 194

steep, 186

324

index

steeplejack, 244

supremo, 234

stentorian, 244

sur-, 207

step, 175

surf, 209

steppe, 266

surveillance, 257

-ster, 231

sushi, 264

stevedore, 258

suspence, 193

stew, 255

Sussex, 229

steward, 221

SUVs, 237

stewardess, 221

svelte, 257

stick, 173

swain, 253

stiletto, 259

swallow, 173

sting, 172

swam, 172

stink, 172

swami, 264

stinko, 234

swamp, 187

stirrup, 190

swaraj, 202

stogy, 244

swarf, 206

stole, 173

swastika, 264

stolen, 173

SWAT, 237

stone, 247

swear, 173

stone wall, 242

sweet, 211

stood, 175

sweetmeat, 211

stoop, 261

sweet potato, 185

stop, 192

swell, 173

storied, 231

swim, 172

strange, 164

swine, 161

straw person, 221

swing, 172

street, 249

swore, 173

strict, 251

sworn, 173

stridden, 171

swum, 172

stride, 171

swung, 172

strike, 171

sympathize, 194

string, 172

syn-, 234

strive, 171

syrup, 190, 262

striven, 171

strode, 171

T

strove, 171

tabasco, 244

struck, 171

tabla, 202

studio, 259

taboo, 265

stung, 172

tae kwon do, 265

stunk, 172

taffeta, 263

stygian, 244

taffrail, 260

sub-, 232

t’ai chi ch’uan, 264

subliminal, 219

tail, 210

subpoena, 251

take, 175, 253

suck, 172

taken, 175

sudoku, 264

talk, 171

suede, 257

talked, 171

Suffolk, 228

tamale, 258

sugar, 262

tame, 242

sugar candy, 264

tandur, 202

sugary, 232

tango, 258

sun, 247

tantalize, 244

sung, 171–172

taptoe, 260

sunk, 172

tarfu, 236

super-, 232

tariff, 263

superduper, 232

tattoo, 260, 265

superhighway, 232

tawdry, 243

superintendent, 251

taxicab, 235

superman, 232

TB, 236

supermarket, 232

-tch, 249

supervisor, 221

tchick, 226

index

325

tck, 226

time-honored, 230

tea, 201, 264

timewise, 233

teacher, 216

Timothy-wise, 233

tear, 173

tinkle, 225

teeter-totter-athon, 240

-tion, 256

teeth, 161

tiptoe, 242

tehee, 225–226

tire, 193

telecom, 235

’tis, 177

telegram, 252

Titus-wise, 233

telephone, 242

to, 188, 247

temple, 250

toboggan, 266

tempo, 259

toby, 244

ten, 247

toe, 242

tenderize, 233

tofu, 264

tepee, 266

toilet, 215

terpsichorean, 244

tokus, 262

terrapin, 266

tomahawk, 266

terribly, 217

tomato, 190, 258

térritòry, 192

tomboy, 244

tête-à-tête, 257

tomcat, 244

th-, 166, 168, 254

tomfool, 244

-th, 176, 231

tommy, 244

than, 169

tommyrot, 244

that, 164, 168, 217

tomtit, 244

that goes without saying, 257

tom-tom, 264

the, 168

tong, 264

theatre, 193

tongue, 194

thee, 165, 165

tongue-in-cheek, 230

their, 162, 165, 168, 188

too, 217

theirs, 165, 168, 222

took, 175

them, 165, 168, 170, 188, 222

top, 247

theory, 252

toque, 206

thereof, 167

tore, 173

these, 164

torn, 173

they, 165, 168, 176, 188, 222

tornado, 258

thine, 165

torso, 259

thing, 212–213

tory, 253

think, 171

totem, 266

thirsty, 231

toto, 265

this, 164

touch-me-not, 230

thon, 222

tovarisch, 266

-thon, 234, 240

toward, 231

thorough, 194

town, 253

those, 164

town ordinance, 253

thou, 165–166, 176

tractorcade, 240

thought, 171

trader, 249

thrall, 253

tradesman, 249

three, 247

traffick, 193

thrive, 171

trait, 190

thriven, 171

traitor, 227

throughout, 228

transient, 251

throve, 171

tread, 173

thug, 264

tree, 247

thumb, 242

trek, 260

Thurston, 229

trial balloon, 257

thy, 165

trigger-happy, 230

ticket, 237

trio, 259

tidal, 232

trod, 173

tier, 210

trodden, 173

tile, 250

troika, 266

time, 247

trombone, 259

326

index

truck, 186

uptight, 230

tsk-tsk, 226

urban, 251

tulip, 266

urge, 251

tumblelog, 207

urinalysis, 239

tundra, 266

us, 165, 170

turban, 266

usher, 238

turkey, 212, 244

Usk, 252

turn, 242

usufruct,

tush, 226

utopia, 244

tut-tut, 226

tuxedo, 244

V

TV, 236

valentine, 243

’twas, 177

valet, 190

’twill, 178

valley, 252

twirl, 239

vamoose, 258

twish, 226

vamp, 266

two, 247

vampire, 266

two weeks, 187

van, 263

tycoon, 264

vandyke, 243

-type, 233

vanilla, 258

typeset, 230

vase, 190

typewrite, 238

Vaseline, 224

typewriter, 238

vastly, 218

typhoon, 264

veal, 255

tyrant, 252

veggie burger, 240

tyre, 193

veld, 260

vendetta, 259

U

venereal, 244

ugh, 226

verkakte, 262

uh-huh, 226

vermicelli, 259

ukase, 266

verse, 250

ukulele, 265

very, 191, 217

ultimate, 251

vest, 184

ultra-, 232

vestment, 255

umbrella, 259

vet, 201

umlaut, 261

veteran, 218

un-, 231

vexillology, 206

unafraid, 231

vibrato, 259

uncle, 165

viewshed, 207

uncola, 231

vignette, 257

under, 211

village, 257

under-, 231

-ville, 258

underbred, 227

vina, 202

underbrush, 184

vindicate, 251

underprivileged, 216

viola, 259

undershorts, 185

viola da gamba, 259

understand, 175, 211, 231

violoncello, 259

undertake, 231

virile, 209

undertaker, 215

virtual, 209

underwear, 185

virtue, 209

underworld, 231

virtuous, 209

undo, 231

virus, 209, 212

undress, 231

vis-à-vis, 257

un-English, 231

viscount, 255, 255

up, 247

vodka, 266

up-, 231

voice mail, 227

upheaval, 231

volcano, 244, 259

upkeep, 231

volt, 243

upon, 228

volunteerism, 233

upright, 231

voodoo, 265

upset, 230, 242

voyage, 257

index

327

voyageur, 258

which, 168

VP, 236

whiskey, 253

vroom, 225

who, 168, 170, 188

vulcanize, 244

wholesome, 231

vulgar, 213

whom, 168, 170

whomever, 168

W

whys, 242

wade, 175

-wich, 240

waffle, 260

wiener, 244, 261

wage, 255

wiener schnitzel, 240

wagon, 260

wienerwurst, 261

waistcoat, 184, 229

wife, 247

wakeathon, 240

wig, 235

walk, 176, 242, 247

wiki, 265

Walkman, 264

will, 177–178

walkshed, 207

will-o’-the-wisp, 230

wall, 249

win, 172

walla, 202

wind, 173

wallpaper, 209

window, 209, 254

waltz, 261

window shade, 186

want, 253

wine, 249, 263

-ward, 231

winsome, 231

warehouse, 210

-wise, 233

wares, 249

wishbone, 230

warison, 206

wisteria, 244

warm, 211

with, 197

warranty, 255

with-, 231

warrior, 253

with child, 215

was, 176

withhold, 231

wash, 175

within, 228

washed-up, 230

without, 228, 230

wast, 176–177

withstand, 231

waste, 198

wok, 264

Watergate, 240

woll, 177

watt, 243

woman, 221

Waves, 237

women, 161

wax ‘grow’, 176

won, 172

way of life, 187, 220

wonderful, 231

we, 165, 167, 176

wonderland, 228

wear, 173

wondrous, 164

weatherwise, 233

wonton, 264

weave, 173

woodchuck, 184, 266

web, 209

woodland, 228

webcasting, 227

woperson, 221

webisode, 239

wordless, 231

weblog or web-log, 227, 235

wore, 173

webmaster, 227

Worldview, 261

webster, 231

worn, 173

weep, 176

worn-out, 230

weigh, 174

worship, 231

weirdo, 234

worsted, 244

well-known, 230

won’t, 177

Weltanschauung, 261

would, 177–178

were, 176

wound, 173

werst, 176–177

wove, 173

wert, 176–177

woven, 173

wet, 201

wreak, 174

wheat, 210

wrens, 236

wheels, 211

wring, 172

whenever, 230

wristband, 229

wherefores, 242

write, 171

328

index

writhe, 172

yin-yang, 264

written, 171

YMCA, 236

wrongo, 234

yodel, 261

wrote, 171

yoga, 264

wrung, 172

you, 165–168, 176, 247

wull, 177

you-all, 167

wunderkind, 261

your, 165–166

Wyecombe, 228

yours, 165

wysiwyg, 237

youse, 167

yummy, 226

X

Yuppie, 237

Xanthippe, 206

xerox, 245

Z

xylophone, 252

Zeitgeist, 261

Zen, 264

Y

zenith, 190, 262

-y, 231

zeppelin, 243

yacht, 260

zero, 262

y’all, 195

zinc, 261

yam, 197, 265

zinnia, 244

yashmak, 206

zip, 209, 237

yawl, 260

zipper, 244

ye, 165–166

zoftig, 262

yell, 173

zombi, 265

yelp, 173

zone, 252

yenta, 262

zoo, 235

yep, 226

zori, 206

yield, 173

zwieback, 261

Index of Persons, Places,

and Topics

A

Abbreviated word forms, 12, 37, 108, 142,

Aeolic, 60

235–236

Æsc (letter), 40–41

Ablative case, 67, 103

Affix(es), 4

Ablaut, 70

from Old English, 230–232

Abstract communication, 211–212

from other languages, 232–233

Abstract meanings, 211–212

voguish, 233–234

Acadians, 60

Affixation, 230–234

Accents, 39

Affricates, 23, 43–44

for stress, 28–29

Africa, English in, 53, 141, 182, 199, 265

Acceptability of language, 12–13

African-American English, 197

Accusative case, 66, 92

African languages

Acronym, 236–237

influence of, 197

Act of Supremacy, 139

loanwords from, 265

Acute accent, 28, 39

African slaves, 140

Adams, John, 141, 168

Afrikaans, 62

“Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly

Afroasiatic languages, 53

Righteous” (Burns), 118

Age of Reason, 63, 159

Adjectives, 163–164

Agglutinative languages, 52

comparative and superlative, 133, 164

Agreement, 4

conversion to verbs, 103, 242

Akkadian, 53

definition of, 3

Albanian, 58

in early Modern English, 163–164

Alcott, Louisa May, 24

inflections of, 93, 106

Alcuin, 85

in Old English, 97–98

Aldhelm, 84

Advanced pronunciation, 146

Aleut dialects, 54–55, 267

Adverbs, 163–164

Alford, Henry, 177

definition of, 3

Alfred, King of Wessex (Alfred the Great), 9,

in early Modern English, 163–164

78, 83

in Old English, 98–99

Algeo, John, 245

AE. See American English

Algorism, 262

Ælfric, 78, 85–86

Allen, Gracie, 163

329

330

index

Allen, Harold B., 196

Analytical comparison, 164

Allomorph, 5

Analytic language, 4

Allophone, 33

Anaptyctic, 31

Alphabet, 36–41

Anaptyxis, 31

Cyrillic, 38

Anatolian, 59

inadequacy of, 20

Ancrene Riwle, 119

Ionic, 37

Angles, 61, 78–81

Italic, 40

Anglian dialect, 85

Latin, 39

Anglo-Frisian languages, 66, 76

phonetic, 20, 34

Anglo-Norman dialect, 114

runic, 40

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Bede), 83

See also Greek alphabet; Roman alphabet

Anglo-Saxon language, 80

Alphabetic writing, 35

Anglo-Saxons

Alphabetism, 236–237

handwriting of, 89–90

Altaic languages, 54

history of, 47, 79–86

Alveolar consonants, 23

Anglo-Saxon Roman alphabet, 40–41

Alveolopalatal consonants, 23

Animals

Amalgamated compound, 229

gesture systems and, 14–15

Amelioration, 210, 213–214

talking by, 14–15

American and British Pronunciation

Anomalous verbs, in Old English, 101–105

(Ekwall), 184

Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare), 168–169, 218

American Civil War, 182

Apes, linguistic accomplishments of, 13–15

American Democrat, The (Cooper), 216

Apheresis, 30, 237

American Dialect Society, 196

Apheretic form, 237

American Dictionary of the English Language

Aphesis, 30, 237

(Webster), 191

Apocope, 30

American English

Apostrophe, 3, 36

conservatism and innovation in, 183–185

to show possession, 93–94, 161–162

consonant sounds in, 21–24

Arabic, 7, 53

dictionaries and the facts, 189–190

loanwords from, 248, 258, 262–264, 266

differences from British English, 188

Aramaic, 53

influence of, 186–187

Arbitrary nature of language, 8

national varieties of, 182–183

Armenian, 58

oneness of, 202

Arnold, Matthew, 258

pronunciations in, 46–47, 190–193

Articles, in Old English, 106

purism in, 174, 188–190

Articles of Religion, 157

quantitative vowel changes in, 126–127, 149

Articulation

spelling in, 193–194

of consonants, 21–24

syntactical and morphological, 2, 187–188

ease of, 32

variations in, 194–199

place of, 21–22

vowels in dialects of, 26–28

Artificial languages, 222

word choice differences, 185–187

Aryan languages, 51, 55

world English, 199–202

Ash (digraph), 40–41

See also Consonants; Loanwords; United

Asia, English in, 182

States; Vowels

Asia Minor, influence of, 37, 59, 141

“American Euphemisms for Dying, Death, and

Asian languages, influence of, 141

Burial” (Pound), 214

Ask words, 6, 26, 177, 183, 188, 191–192

American Indian languages, 35, 54, 141

ASL. See American Sign Language

loanwords from, 244, 266

Aspiration, 33

writing in, 35

Assimilation, 29–30

Americanisms, 186–187, 243, 258, 264–265

speech rate and, 30

American Language, The (Mencken), 196, 216

Association of ideas,

American Medical Association, 216

meaning and, 212

American Sign Language (ASL), 1

Associative change, 10

American South, [r] in, 24

Assyrian, 53

American Speech, 196

a-stems, 93–94

American Tongues (film), 196

Asterisk, 165

Americas

As You Like It (Shakespeare), 178

English in, 141, 182

Atatürk, Kemal (Mustafa Kemal Pasha), 7

language influences from, 141

Athematic verbs, 65

Ameslan. See American Sign Language

Attic-Ionic, 60

Amharic, loanwords from, 267

Attic koine, 60

index

331

Augustine (Saint), 78, 80–81, 83

Boswell, James, 168–169, 171

Austen, Jane, 189, 222

Bound morphemes, 5

Australasian languages, 54

Boustrophedon, 36

influence of, 200

Bow-wow theory, 13

loanwords from, 265

Boycott, Charles Cunningham, 243

Australia, 54

Brain, language development and, 13

English in, 199

Bref Grammar for English (Bullokar), 152

languages of, 54

Breton, 61

Austronesian, 54

Brinsley, Richard, 144

Auxiliary verbs, 106–107

Brinton, Crane, 18

contractions of, 177–178

Britain

Avestan language, 55, 58

attitudes toward American English in, 81, 188

Ayenbite of Inwit, 119

English language in, 78–79

Aymara, 54

before English people, 79–82

English speakers in, 79

pronunciation in, 32, 42, 143, 184, 190–191,

B

229

Babylonian, 53

Viking conquests of, 82–84

Back-formation, 238–239

See also British English

Back vowels, 25, 43–45

Briticism, 187

Bacon, Francis, 174, 251

British Broadcasting Company, 182

Beckett, Samuel, 200

British (Brythonic) Celtic, 61, 79

Bailey, Nathan, 157

British Critic, 151

Bailey, Richard, 157

British English

Baltic languages, 59

American English infiltration of, 186–188

Balto-Slavic languages, 59

consonant sounds in, 24

Banckes, Richard, 152

differences from American English, 44–45,

Bantu group, 53

192–193

Barbour, John, 120

lax vowels in, 27

Barnes, Clive, 189

pronunciations in, 190–193

Barnhart, Clarence L., 251

purism in, 188–190

Barrett, Grant, 206

quantitative vowel changes in, 149

Base morpheme, 5

[r] in, 191

Basque, 54, 241

spelling in, 193–194

Battle of Hastings, 79

syntactical and morphological

Battle of Maldon, The, 83

differences from American English, 2,

Be

187–188

consuetudinal, 197

variation within, 198–199

personal inflections of, 176

vowels in, 26–27, 29

BE. See British English

See also American English; Loanwords

Bede (Venerable), 78, 81

British India, 182

Benedict Biscop, 84

Britannia, 79

Benedictine Revival, 79

Broad transcription, phonetic, 33

Bengali, 58

Bronze Age culture, 49

loanwords from, 267

Browning, Robert, 179

Beowulf, 79, 85

Boycott, Charles Cunningham, 243

manuscript form, 90

Bruce, The (Barbour), 119–120

Berber dialects, 53

Brut (Layamon), 262

Bierce, Ambrose, 209

Bubonic plague. See Black Death

Bilabial consonants, 23

Bulgarian, 51, 59

Black Death, 112, 114

Bullokar, John, 157

Black English, 197. See also African-American

Bullokar, William, 152

English

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George, 226

Black letter printing, 63

Burchfield, Robert, 189

Blending, 239–241

Burke, Edmund, 200

Blends, 239–241

Burmese, 54, 236

Bloomer, Amelia Jenks, 243

Burns, Robert, 9

Blount, Thomas, 157

Butler, Charles, 152

Booke at Large (Bullokar), 152

Butler, Samuel, 189

Book of Common Prayer, 139, 157

Butters, Ronald R., 203

Book of Margery Kempe, 114

Byrhtnoth, 83

Borrowing, 248

Byron, George Gordon (Lord), 164, 168

332

index

C

history of, 115

c, 23, 37–38, 87–88

intensifiers and, 217

Cabot, John, 113

Chaucer Society, 177

Caedmon, 85

Childe Harold (Byron), 164, 174

Caesar, Julius, 79

Chimpanzees, linguistic abilities of, 14–15

Cain, James M., 185

Chinese, 199

Caine, Hall, 226

loanwords from, 264, 267

Cajuns, 60

writing in, 35, 54

Cape Colony, British occupation, 181

Christianity, in Britain, 78, 80–81

Claudius, Emperor, 79

Churchill, Winston, 189

Calque, 213

Circle (diacritic), 39

Cambridge Murders, The, 188

Circumflex, 39

Camelot (Lerner and Leowe), 115

Clang association, 213

Campbell, Alistair, 77, 111

Classes of strong verbs, 69

Campbell, George, 159, 168

Class I verbs, 104, 171–172

Canada, English in, 182, 196, 199

Class II verbs, 104, 172

Cannon, Garland, 246, 266, 268

Class III verbs, 104, 172–173

Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), 17–18, 160–161, 163

Class IV verbs, 104, 173–174

Cantonese, 54

Class V verbs, 104, 174

Canute, 79, 83

Class VI verbs, 104, 175

Carnegie, Andrew, 194

Class VII verbs, 104, 175–176

Carroll, Lewis, 239

Classical languages, influence of, 142

Case

Cleft construction, in Irish English, 201

ablative, 67

Click sounds, 53

accusative, 66, 92

Clipped form, 235–236

dative, 66, 92–93

Closed syllable, 126

genitive, 66, 92, 161–163

Close e, 118, 146

grammatical functions and, 64

Close o, 118

inflectional suffixes and, 4

Cloud of Unknowing, 114

instrumental, 67, 93

Coastal Southern dialect (U.S.), 195

locative, 67

Cocker, Edward, 157

in Modern English, 96

Cockeram, Henry, 157

nominative, 66, 92

Cockney English, 37

in Old English, 95

Cognates,

for pronouns, 168

defined, 63

vocative, 66

English, 253

Case forms, of pronouns, 66, 92–93, 168

German, 211

Cassidy, Frederic G., 47, 196

Indo-European culture and, 64

Castilian Spanish, 61

Indo-European languages and,

Catalan, 51, 60

63–64, 69

Catch-22, use of term, 245

Latin, 211

Cawdrey, Robert, 139, 157

Collocations, 3

Caxton, William, 39, 113, 141

Colonization, of Ireland, 200–210

-ce, British use of, 193

Color, language categorization of, 15

Cecil, Lord David, 170

Combining, 227–234

Cedilla, 39

Combining parts, 230–234

Celtic languages, 61–62

Combining words, 227–230

loanwords from, 252–253

Commonization, 243

Celtic people, in Britain, 79

Communication

Central vowels, 25, 44

language as, 15–16

Centum languages, 55

by nonhumans, 14–15

Chadic dialects, 53

Comparative adjectives and adverbs

Chancery office, 113

in early Modern English, 4

Charles the Great (Charlemagne), 85

in Middle English, 133

Charles the Simple (France), 114

in Old English, 98–99, 133

Chaucer, Geoffrey,

Complementary distribution, 33

Canterbury Tales, 160–161

Compounds, 6

compounds and, 229

amalgamated, 229

death of, 113

function and form of, 230

double negatives and, 160

in Old English, 90

ejaculations and, 225–227

spelling and pronunciation of, 46–47,

French loan words and, 256–257

227–229

index

333

Computer jargon, 220

Creolize, 197

Concise Oxford Dictionary of English

Critical Pronouncing Dictionary

Place-Names (Ekwall), 229

(Walker), 144

Concord, 4

Crusades, 59

Concordance (Bartlett), 153

Culture

Concrete meanings, 207

Bronze Age, 49

Conjugation, 101–103, 134–135

Indo-European, 50

Connotation, 209

Neolithic, 49

Consonant changes, Grimm and Verner on, 71–74

Paleolithic, 49

Consonants

Cushitic dialects, 53

classification of, 21–24

Cymbeline, 170

of current English, 21–24

Cynewulf, 85

in early Modern English, 149–151

Cyril, 39

Greek, 36–37

Cyrillic alphabet, 38

intrusive, 31

Cyrus, 58

in Middle English, 116–117

Czech, 23, 39, 43, 51, 59

in Old English, 87–88

loanwords from, 249, 266–267

pronunciation of, 46–47

Consonant sounds, spelling of English, 41–43

Constructions, verbal, 179

D

Consuetudinal be, 197

Danelaw, 78

Continental values, Old English vowels and,

Danes, Vikings as, 82–85

25–28, 87

Danielsson, Bror, 152

Contractions, 177–178

Danish, 40, 51, 62, 63, 79

Contrastive pairs, 33

loanwords from, 249, 254

Conventional nature of language, 8–13

Dante, 61

Cook, James, 265

Dative case, 66

Cooper, James Fenimore, 216

De-, as prefix, 232–233, 256

Coptic language, 53

Deaf, American Sign Language of, 1, 14

Coriolanus (Shakespeare), 178–179

Declension,

Cornish language, 52, 61

genetive plural form in, 97

Correctness of language, 12–13

noun, 67

Corruption, linguistic, 10–11

in Old English, 67, 93

Court of Chancery, 156

weak, 70, 93–95, 97

Craigie, Sir William, 186

weak and strong, 69, 95, 97–98

Creating words, 224–246

Definite article, 9

affixes from Old English and,

Definiteness, adjectives inflected for, 93

230–232

Demonstrative pronouns

affixes from other languages and, 232–233

in Middle English, 132

amalgamated compounds and, 229

in Old English, 96–97

apheretic and aphetic forms and, 237

Demotike, 60

back-formations and, 238–239

Denotation, 209

blendings, 239–241

Dental consonants, 23

clipped forms and, 235–236

Dental suffix, 69

echoic words and, 225

De Saussure, Ferdinand, 206

ejaculations and, 225–227

Desexed language, 90–92, 220

folk etymology, 241

De Quincey, Thomas, 189

function and form of compounds and, 230

Diachronic variation, 11

initialisms and, 236–237

Diacritical marks, 11, 39

morphemes, new, 239–240

Dialects, 11

from proper names, 243–245

of British English, 94, 100

root creations, 224–225

ethnic and social, 196–198

shifting to new uses, 242–245

eye, 47

sources for, 245–246

Germanic, 62–63, 260–262

spelling and pronunciation of compounds,

of Middle English, 250–251

227–229

of Old English, 85–86

voguish affixes and, 233–234

regional, 195–196

word parts, combining, 230–234

Dialects of England (Trudgill), 198

words, combining and compounding,

Diary in America (Marryat), 215

227–230

Dictionaries, 157–158, 189–190

words, shortening of, 235–239

Dictionarium Britannicum (Bailey and

Creole, 197–198

others), 157

334

index

Dictionary of American English on Historical

verbs in, 170–179

Principles, A (Craigie), 181, 185

vowels in, 144–149

Dictionary of Americanisms, 243

Ease of articulation, 32

Dictionary of American Regional English

East Germanic languages, 62–63, 75

(DARE), 196

East India Company, 139, 182

Dictionary of the English Language

Eastman, George, 224

(Johnson), 144, 157–158

East Midland dialect, 119

Digraphs

East Slavic, 59

in British use, 194

Ecclesiastical History of the English People

definition of, 39

(Bede), 83, 129

in Old, Middle, and Modern English, 39, 41,

Echoic words, 8, 225

88, 116–119

Edgeworth, Maria, 200

in phonetic transcriptions, 28

Edh, 39, 41–42

Diminutive suffixes or words, 229, 231–232

Edited English, 195

Ding-dong theory, 13

Edmund Ironside, 83

Diphthong

Edward the Confessor, 79, 113

definition of, 26

-ee, as affix, 234

in Old English, 87, 124–125

Efik, 2

in Middle English, 124–125, 148

Egbert, 81

in early Modern English, 43, 45, 148

Egyptian language, 53, 59, 21, 258

Diphthongization, 125

Ejaculations, 225–227

Direct source, 248

Ekwall, Eilert, 152, 176, 184, 229

Displacement, 16

Elementary Spelling Book (Webster), 150

Dissimilation, 30

Elements of Orthoëpy (Nares), 144

Distinctive sounds, 33

Elided sound, 30

Dobson, E. J., 147, 152

Elision, 30

Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge, 239

speech rate and, 32

Don Juan (Byron), 168, 238

Elizabeth I, 139

Doric, 60, 65

Elphinston, James, 144

Double comparison, 164

Emma of Normandy, 84

Double letters, 118

en as prefix, 4

Double negative, 160

Enclitic, 102, 163

Double plural, 95

England (Britain). See Britain

Double superlatives, 98

English Dialect Grammar (Wright), 123

Doublet, 151, 259, 266

English Dictionarie (Cockeram), 157

Double-u, 116

English Dictionary (Cocker), 157

Dravidian languages, 53–54

English Expositour, An (Bullokar), 157

loanwords from, 264

English Grammar (Butler), 152

Duality of patterning, 2

English Grammar (Murray), 159

Dual number, 99

English language

Dumas, Alexandre, 198

as Germanic language, 90–91

Dunsany, Lord, 189

history of, 17–18

Duplessis-Praslin, Maréchal, 243

national varieties of, 182–185

Dutch, 62, 64, 76, 115

non-Indo-European languages and, 53–55

loanwords from, 260–261, 265

reascendancy of, 114–115

sounds of, 20–34, 41–47

in United States, 11

E

West Germanic languages and, 74–76

Earl of Sandwich, 243

See also American English; British English;

Early English Text Society, 108

Early Modern English; Indo-European

Early Modern English, 139–180

languages; Middle English; Modern

adjectives and adverbs in, 163–164

English; Old English

consonants in, 149–151

English people, in Britain, 79–81

grammar and usage in, 158–160

English Pronunciation (Dobson), 152

illustrations of, 152–154, 179–180

English Pronouncing Dictionary (Jones), 194

key events in, 139–140

English usage, value of guides to, 189, 222

nouns in, 160–163

English writing, history of, 40–41

orthography of, 7, 141–142

Entertainment, language for, 16

prepositions in, 179

Epenthesis, 31

pronouns in, 164–170

Eponym, 243

pronunciation in, 151–153

-er, 4, 133, 164

transition to Modern, 140–141

American use of, 193, 231, 238–239

index

335

-es, 5, 94, 96, 99, 121, 127–130, 132,

loanwords from, 39, 42, 45, 150, 254–258,

160, 163

263, 266

Eskimo-Aleut, loanwords from, 267

Norman conquest, 113–114

Eskimo dialects, 54–55

spelling conventions of, 116–117

-est, 4, 98–99, 133, 164

Fricatives, 22–23, 30–32, 42

Estonian, 54

in early Modern English, 23, 46–47

Ethelbert, 78, 81

first sound shift and, 71–75

Ethelred, 83

in Middle English, 123, 125, 149

Ethiopic, 53

in Old English, 89, 122

Ethnic dialects, 196–198

[ž], 89

Etymological respellings, 141, 143

Frisian, 62 66, 76, 249

Etymological sense, 208–209

Front vowels, 25, 43–44

Etymology, 5

Functional shift, 242–243

folk, 32, 241

Function words, 4

root creations and, 224–225

Furnivall, Frederick James, 177

Etymon, 150, 248

Futhorc, 40

Euphemism, 214–217

Futurity, verbs for, 178, 179

Eurasiatic languages, 54–55

Fu words, 236

“Eve of St. Agnes, The” (Keats), 17

Everyman, 114

Expanded verb forms, 178–179

G

Explosives, 23

Gaelic (Goedelic), 61–62

Eye dialect., 47

Galician, 60

gate, blending and, 240

Gaulish languages, 61

F

Gelb, Ignace, 35, 37

Faeroese, 62

Gell-Mann, Murray, 245

Faraday, Michael, 243

Gender

Far East, loanwords from, 264–265

grammatical, 91

Fashion, affixes and, 233

in Old English, 91–92

Faulkner, William, 150

semantic marking for, 220–222

Feminine genitives, 161–163

General Dictionary of the English Language

Final k, 193

(Sheridan), 144

Finite forms, of Old English, 102–103

Generalization, 210–211

Finnish, 54, 63, 236

General Semantics, 208

Finno-Ugric, 54

Genetic classification of languages, 53

First Folio (Shakespeare), 142, 153–154

Genesis, 108–109, 137, 180

First language, English as a, 199

Genitive case, 66, 93

First Part of the Elementarie, The

adverbial, 99

(Mulcaster), 152

group-genitive, 162–163

First Sound Shift (Grimm’s Law), 71–73

his-genitive, 161–162

Latin loanwords and, 249–250

uninflected genitive, 163

Fisher, John H., 156

Genitive inflection, in Old English, 66

Flemish, 39, 62, 76

Geographical dialects, 194–196

loanwords from, 115, 260

Germanic languages, 9, 62–63

Folk etymology, 241

changes from Indo-European to,

Foreign language, English as, 115–116, 199,

69–71

247–268

East Germanic, 63

Forster, E. M., 170

English word stock from, 248–249

Form of Perfect Living, The (Rolle),

loanwords from, 260–262

114, 136

North Germanic, 62

Forshall, Josiah, 137

West Germanic, 62, 73–76

Fowler, F. G., 174

Germanic runes, 40

Fowler, H. W., 174

Gerry, Elbridge, 243

Free accentual system, 70

Gestures

Free morphemes, 5

in prelanguage, 13

Free variation, 33

speech and, 8

French, 38, 52

as vocal language, 6, 8

dialects, 60, 114

Gilbert, W. S., 46, 226

diphthongs from, 125

Gill, Alexander, 152

fricatives and, 42

Gilman, E. Ward, 189

influences on vocabulary, 115–116

Gimbutas, Marija, 50, 77

336

index

Glides, 27

Handedness, language development and, 13

in American English, 27–28

Handwriting, Anglo-Saxon, 89–90

in Middle English, 125

Hardicanute, 79, 83

Globe, The, 153

Harold (King of England), 113

Goldsmith, Oliver, 200

Harold Harefoot, 83

Glorious Revolution, 140

Hart, John, 152

Glossographia (Blount), 157

Harte, Bret, 238

Glottal fricative, 23

Hastings, Battle of, 79, 113

Glottal stop, 23, 33

Hayakawa, S. I., 208

Gothic language, 63

Hebrew, 53

Gothic, as a term, 63

loanwords from, 262–263, 267

Gove, Philip, 190

loanwords in Yiddish, 62

Government of India Act, 182

Hellenic dialects, 60

Gower, John, 119, 120

Heller, Joseph, 245

Gowers, Sir Ernest, 170

Heptarchy, Anglo-Saxon, 81

Gradation, 70, 103

Herball (Banckes), 153

Grammar

h-forms, of personal pronouns, 168

affixes, 4

High German, 62, 75

concord, 4

loanwords from, 261–262

inflection, and, 64–67

High German (Second) Sound Shift, 75

parts of speech, 3–4

High vowels, 25

prosodic signals, 4–5

Hilton, Walter, 114

See also function words; word order

Hindi, 58, 199, 201, 267

Grammar book, 156

His-genitive, 161–162

Grammatical functions, 64

History of English, reasons for

of compounds, 230

studying, 17–18

Grammatical gender, 91

History of Modern Colloquial English

Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (Wallis),

(Wyld), 151

159, 178

History of Modern English Sounds and

Grammatical signals, 3–5

Morphology, A (Ekwall), 152, 176

Grammatical system, 2

History of Orosius, 84

Grave accent mark, 29, 39

Hittites, 59

Great Vowel Shift, 144–147

Hockett, Charles, 206

Greek alphabetic writing, 36–38

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 238

Green, John Richard, 84

Homographs, 7

Greenberg, Joseph H., 52, 54

Homonym, 7, 231, 236

Greenberg on

Homophones, 7, 26

Eurasiatic, 54–55

in American English, 26, 177

Indo-European, 67

Homorganic sounds, 31

typological classification, 52

Hook (diacritic), 39

word order, 67

Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 195

Greene, Robert, 164, 170

Horn, Wilhelm, 152

Gregory, Lady Augusta, 200

House of Fame (Chaucer), 120–121

Gregory I (Pope), missionaries to Angles and,

Hudson’s Bay Company, 140

81, 83

Hundred Years’ War, 112, 114

Grimm, Jacob, 71, 103

Hungarian, 52, 54

Grimm’s Law, 71–73

loanwords from, 266

Group-genitive construction, 162–163

Hybrid formations, 250

Growth and Structure of the English Language

Hyperbole, 211

(Jespersen), 84

Hypercorrection, 32

Guide to the World’s Languages, A (Ruhlen), 54

Hypercorrect pronunciation, 150

Gullah, 2–3

Gypsy. See Romany (Gypsy)

I

Ibibio, 2

H

Icelandic, 62, 64, 75

Hac˘ek, 39

Ideographic writing, 35–36

Halfdan, 82

Idiolect, 11

Hall, Joan Houston, 47, 196

Idiom, 6

Hamitic languages, 53

in Modern English, 98

Hamlet (Shakespeare), 151, 167–168, 178

Idylls of the King (Tennyson), 115

index

337

Illustrated London News, 174

Intonation in British and American English, 192

Illyrian, 54

Intrusion of sounds, 31

Immediate source, 248

Intrusive r, 24

Imperative form, 101–102

Intrusive schwa, 31

Impersonal constructions, 179

Inverse spellings, 151

i-mutation, 88

Ionic alphabet, 37–38

Incorporative languages, 52

Iran. See Persian

India, loanwords from, 263–264

Ireland, 62

Indian English, 201–202

Irish English, 199–201

Indicative verb forms, 101–102

Irish Land League, 243

Indic dialects, 55, 58, 264

Irish, loanwords from, 253, 267

Indic writings, 37

Irish Gaelic, 40

Indo-European, 55–71

Irish surnames, 147

cognates in, 63–67

Irregular plurals, 161

divisions of, 55–63

-ise and -ize endings, 194, 233

family of, 51

-ism, as suffix, 233

First Sound Shift, 71–74

Isolating languages, 52

free accentual system of, 70

Italian language

Germanic changes from, 69–71

loanwords from, 259

history of, 49–50

Tuscany and, 61

inflections in, 64–67

typology of, 52

language tree of, 55–63

Italic languages, 60

noun declension in, 67

Italo-Celtic languages, 61

origins, 50–52

Its, 100

word order in, 67–69

i-umlaut, 88, 95–96

Indo-European hypothesis, 51

Ivar the Boneless, 82

Indo-Europeans, origins of, 50–52

Indo-Iranian languages, 55–58

J

Indonesian, loanwords from, 267

“Jabberwocky” (Carroll), 239

Infinitives

Jamestown, Virginia, 140

in Middle English, 106

nonfinite forms, 102–105

Japanese, 9

in Old English, 101, 106

kanji in, 8

loanwords from, 264, 267

preterit-present verbs, 104

Japhetic language, Indo-European as, 68

split, 12

strong verbs, 104, 134

Jargon, computer, 220

weak verbs, 103

Jespersen, Otto, 152, 162, 170

John (king of England), 112, 114

Inflection(s), 92–93

Johnson, Samuel, 157–158

of adjectives, 92–93

definition of, 4

Jones, Daniel, 194

in Indo-European languages, 52, 64–67

Jones, William, 51

Joyce, James, 200

in Middle English, 128–133

Juliana of Norwich, 114

noun, 66–67, 129–133

in Old English, 92–93

Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), 170, 172

in suffixes, 4

Jupiter, 50

Jutes, 61, 78, 80, 85

verb, 65–66

Juvenal, 217

Inflectional suffixes, 4

Inflective languages, 52, 64

-ing, 4, 135, 150, 179, 231

K

Initialisms, 236–237

Kanji, 8

Inkhorn terms, 140

Keats, John, 17, 130, 147, 210, 238

Inland Southern dialect (U.S.), 195

Kechumaran languages, 54

Inorganic -e, 127

Kempe, Margery, 114

Instrumental case, 67, 93

Kennedy, Arthur G., 196, 229

Insular hand, 40

Kentish dialect, 85

Intensifiers, 217–218

Kenyon, John S., 163

Interdental consonants, 23

Khoisan languages, 53

Interdental sounds, 23

Kinesics, 8

International Phoenetic Association, 40

Kingdoms, Anglo-Saxon, 81

Internet, spellings for, 47. See also World Wide Web

King Charles II, 140

Interrogative pronouns, 100–101, 168

King Charles the Simple of France, 114

338

index

King George VI, 189

Laryngeal sound, 59

King Henry II, 200

Late Modern English, 181–205

King Henry III, 112

conservatism and innovation in, 183–185

King Henry VIII, Tudor, 113, 206

dictionaries and, 189–190

King James Bible, 140–141, 167, 179–180

key events in, 181–182

King John, 112, 114

national varieties of, 182–183, 194–199

King Lear (Shakespeare), 165

national differences in word choice,

Kipling, Rudyard, 133, 264

185–187

Knights of the Teutonic Order, 59

national differences in pronunciation,

Knott, Thomas A., 163

190–193

Koine, 60

oneness of, 202

Kökeritz, Helge, 146

other variations in, 194–199

Korean, 54–55

purism, 188–190

loanwords from, 265, 267

spelling in, 193–194

Korzybski, Alfred, 208

syntactical and morphological differences,

Kraka, 82

187–188

Krapp, George Philip, 168

World English, 199–202

Kurath, Hans, 138, 148, 196, 203

Lateral liquid, 24

Kurgan culture, 50

Latin language

concord in, 4

English vocabulary and, 11

L

influence of, 142

Labial consonants, 21, 22, 24

loanwords from, 248–252

Labiodental consonants, 23

Romance languages from, 37–38, 60

Lana (chimpanzee), 14–15

Latvia, 59

Langland, William, 115

Lax vowel, 26–28

Language(s), 1–19

Layamon, 262

ability in animals, 14–15

Learned influence on spelling, 143

ability to learn, 1–2

Learned words, 219–220, 248

balanced sound system in, 32

Legend of Good Women, The (Chaucer), 229

change in, 10, 209–222

Lehmann, Winfred P., 68

characteristics of, 2–16

Lehnert, Martin, 152

classification of, 21, 52

Length (of sounds), 27

as communication, 15–16

Lengthening, 126

comparisons of, 64, 66

Leveling, 127

as convention, 8–13

Lexis, 2

correctness and acceptability of, 12–13

Life of Johnson (Boswell), 168

corruption of, 10–11

Ligature, 39

definition of, 2

Lighter, Jonathan, 198, 246

genetic classification, 53

Lindberg, Conrad, 137

as human, 13–15

Linguistic Atlas of New England

Indo-European, 51

(Kurath), 196

innate ability for, 14

Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States

family, 52–53

(Pederson), 196

as gestures, 8

Linguistic Atlas of the United States and

non-Indo-European, 53–55

Canada, 196

in Norman England, 41

Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest

open aspect of, 2–16

(Allen), 196

origin of, 13

Linguistic corruption, 10–11

paradigmatic or associative change in, 10

Linguistics, language changes and, 206–222

signs in, 5–6

Linking r, 24

social change in, 10

Liquids, 24, 43

as speech, 1, 6–8

Literature

study of, 17–18, 156–160

by Irish authors, 200

syntagmatic change and, 10

in early Modern English, 159

as system, 2–5

in Middle English, 123, 135

variation in, 11–12

in Old English, 85, 135

vocalness of, 6–8

See also specific works and authors

as writing, 6–8

Lithuanian, 55, 59, 73

See also specific languages

Little Women (Alcott), 24

Language family, 52–53

Lives of a Cell (Thomas), 1

Lappish, 54

Loan translations, 257–258

index

339

Loanwords

Malory, Thomas, 115

from African languages, 265, 267

Manchu, 54

from American Indian languages, 266–267

Mandarin, 54

from Celtic languages, 252–253

Manner of articulation, of consonants, 21

from Czech, 266

“Man Who Would Be King, The”

from Dutch and Flemish, 260–261

(Kipling), 133

in early Modern English, 254

Manx language, 62

from Far East and Australasia, 264–265

Maori language, 54

from French, 267, 254–258

Marked words, 220

from Greek, 267, 248, 251–252

Marryat, Frederick, 11

from Hebrew, 267

Mathews, M. M., 258

from High German, 75, 267, 261–262

Maugham, Somerset, 170, 189

from Hungarian, 266

Maxi-, as prefix, 234

from Iran and India, 263–264

McDavid, Raven I., 148

from Italian, 267, 259

Meaning, 206–222

from Japanese, 267

amelioration and, 213–214

from Latin, 267, 248–251, 267

background of, 206–207

learned, 248

compounds and, 230

from Low German, 260–261

etymology and, 208–209

from Near East, 262–263

euphemisms, 214–217

from Polish, 266

generalization and specialization, 210–211

popular, 248

inevitablity of change, 222

from Russian, 267

intensifiers and, 217–218

from Scandinavian languages, 173,

pejoration and, 210, 213–214

175, 253–254

process of changing, 209–210

from Slavic languages, 266

semantic changes, 207–210, 218–221

sources of recent, 245–246, 266–267

sound associations and, 213

from Spanish and Portuguese, 258–259, 267

taboos, 214–217

spelling and, 193–194, 243

transfer of, 210–213

from Turkish, 266

variable and vague, 208

from Yiddish, 267

words and, 206–207

Locative case, 67

See also Loanwords

Logographic writing, 35

Mencken, H. L., 196, 224

Logonomia Anglica (Gill), 152

Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare), 169, 215

Lollardy, 114

Mercian dialect, 85

London Journal (Boswell), 168, 171

Merging, 127

London speech, as standard, 119–121

Merriam Webster, 189

Long s, 41, 152

Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 190, 198

Long syllables, 95, 128, 130

Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare), 179

Long vowels, 144

Metaphor, 211

Lord of the Rings (Tolkien), 85

Metathesis, 31

Louisiana Purchase, 181

Methode or Comfortable Beginning for All

Love’s Labour’s Lost (Shakespeare), 142

Unlearned, A (Hart), 152

Low German, 75

Metonyny, 211

loanwords from, 260–261

Middle English, 112–137

Lowth, Robert, 12, 159–160, 168

adjectives in, 133

Low vowels, 25

consonants in, 116–117, 122–123

Luick, Karl, 152

dialects of, 119

Lynch, William, 243

digraphs in, 39

-ly suffix, 91, 98, 122, 164, 230

diphthongs in, 124–125

foreign influences on, 115–116

French loanwords in, 117, 125

M

grammar changes in, 128–129

Macbeth (Shakespeare), 169

illustrations of, 136–137

Macedonian, 54

inflections, reduction in, 128–129

Macron, 86

key events in, 112–113

Madden, Frederic, 137

Latin loanwords in, 114–116

Maiden’s Dream, A (Greene), 164

lengthening and shortening of vowels, 126–127

Majuscules, 38

leveling of unstressed vowels in, 127

Malayo-Polynesian, 54

literature in, 114–115

loanwords from, 265, 267

London standard, 119–121

Malone, Kemp, 196

Norman Conquest and, 113–114

340

index

Middle English (cont.)

N

nouns in, 129–133

Nahuatl, 54, 258

participles, 135

Names, words from, 243–245

personal endings in, 134–135

Nares, Robert, 144

pronouns in, 130–133

Narrow transcription, 33

pronunciation in, 122–128

Nasals, 23, 43

reascendancy of, 114–115

National Council of Teachers of English, 222

Scandinavian loanwords in, 115

National hands, 40

schwa, loss of, in, 127–128

National varieties of English, 194–199

spelling in, 116–119

pronunciation and, 46–47, 182–185

transition to Modern English, 140–141

spelling and, 46–47

verbs in, 133–134

syntactical and morphological differences,

vowels in, 118–119, 123–124

187–188

word order in, 135–136

variation within, 194–199

Mid vowels, 32, 145

word choice and, 185–187

Mikado, The (Gilbert), 226

Native language. See First language

Milestones in the History of English in America

Natural gender, 91

(Read), 203

Near East, loanwords from, 262–263

Milne, A. A., 24

Negatives, double or multiple, 160

Mini-, as prefix, 234

Negative verb, in Old English, 107

Minimal pairs. See Contrastive pairs

Neo-Latin forms, 251

Minuscule, 38

Neolithic Age, 49

Missionaries, to Angles, 81

Neuter, its as, 131, 167

Mississippi Valley, vowels before [r] in, 28

New England,

Moabitic, 53

short o in, 26

Modern English

speech dialect in, 26

case and number, 96

New English Bible, 185

diphthongs in, 43, 45, 122, 125

Newman, Cardinal, 189

evolution of English and, 10

Newspaper, first daily, 140

French loanwords in, 254–258

New Universal Etymological English Dictionary

functional shifts in, 242–243

(Scott-Bailey), 157

grammar of, 10, 92–93

New World of English Words (Phillips), 157

Latin loanwords in, 256–258, 267

New York Herald-Tribune Book

Mercian speech and, 86

Review, 187

Scandinavian loanwords in, 173, 175, 254

New York Times, 170, 194, 206

sounds of, 20–34

New Zealand, English in, 182, 199

spellings in, 17

Niger-Kordofanian languages, 53

transition to, 69, 95

-nik, as suffix, 234, 262

See also Early Modern English

Nilo-Saharan languages, 53

Modern English Grammar on Historical

1984 (Orwell), 245

Principles (Jespersen), 152, 162, 170

Nixon, Richard, 240

Modern Language Association, 214

Nominative case, 66, 92

Modifiers, in Old English, 96–99

Non-, as affix, 232, 234

Mongolian, 54

Nondistinctive sounds, 33

Monophthong, 27

Non-Dravidian languages, 58

Monophthongization, 124

Nonfinite verb forms, of Old English,

Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 115

102–103

Moore, Francis, 186

Nonstandard speech, singular and plural you in,

Morphemes, 5

167

from blending, 239–240

Norman Conquest, 113–114

Morphology, of American and British English,

impact on English spelling, 41

187–188

Normandy, 79, 84, 112–114

Morphosyntax, 2, 206

Norman-French dialect, 114

Morte Arthure, Le (Malory), 115

writing of, 41, 47

Mulcaster, Richard, 152

Normans, 41, 113–114

Murray, James, 189

Irish English and, 200–201

Murray, Lindley, 159–160

as Northmen, 83–84, 113

Mutated-vowel plurals, 88, 95–96, 98,

Northern dialect (England), 94, 119,

103, 161

136, 144

Mutation, 18. See also Umlaut

Northern dialect (U.S.), 176, 195, 230

Mycenaean, 60

North Germanic languages, 62, 75

Mystery plays, 114

Northmen. See Vikings

index

341

North Midland dialect (U.S.), 195

strong verbs, 103–104

Northumbrian dialect, 119

subjunctive forms, 102

Norwegian, 9, 39–40, 62, 64

suppletive verbs, 105

loanwords from, 267

syntax in, 105–108

Nostratic languages, 55

verbs in, 101–105

Noun inflections, 66–67

vocabulary in, 90–92

Nouns, 66–67, 93–96, 129–133, 160–163

vowels, 86–87

definition of, 3

weak verbs, 103

in early Modern English, 160–163

See also Anglo-Saxons; Germanic languages

inflection of, 66–67

Old Norse, 82–84

in Old English, 93–96

Old Prussian, 59

n-plural, 95

Old Testament, in Old English, 53, 59

n-stem, 94

-on, as suffix, 234

Number, 96

Onomatopoeia, 225

in Indo-European, 64, 67

Open e, 118, 146

in Modern English, 96

Open o, 118

in Old English, 93

Open syllables, 126

verb endings for, 176–177

Open system, language as, 16

Oral-aural sounds, 6

Oral signals, 13

O

Organs of speech, 20–21

Objective form, 100, 133, 169

Orthoepists, 144

Objective meaning, 212

Orthographie, An (Hart), 152

Oblique forms, 121

Orthography, in early Modern English, 7,

O’Casey, Sean, 200

141–144

Oceania, 183. See also Pacific Islands; Polynesia

Orwell, George, 245

“Ode to a Nightingale” (Keats), 238

o-stems, 95

OED. See Oxford English Dictionary, The

Othello (Shakespeare), 146, 175, 179

Off-glide, 27

Ottoman Turkish (Osmanli), 54

Ohthere, 84

Overgeneralization, 32

OK, 12, 187, 236

OV languages, 68

Old Church Slavic (Slavonic), 60

Owl and the Nightingale, The, 119

Old English, 78–110

Oxford English Dictionary, The (OE), 99, 141,

adjectives in, 97–98

181, 189, 190

adverbs in, 98–99

case and number, 96

consonants in, 87–89

P

demonstratives in, 96–97

Pacific islands 199

dialects of, 85–86

See also Oceania; Polynesia

gender in, 91–92

loanwords from, 199, 265

Golden Age of, 84–85

Palatal click, 226

grammar of, 20, 92–93

Palatal consonants, 21–24

handwriting, 89–90

Palatalization, 30

illustrations of, 208–110

Palatal sounds, 23

imperative forms, 101–f102

Palate, 21, 23–24

indicative verbs, 101–102

Palatovelar consonants, 21–22, 44

inflection, 92–93

Palatovelar nasal, 24

interrogative pronouns, 100–101

Palatovelar stops, 23

i-umlaut, 95

Paleolithic Age, 49

key events in, 78–79

Pali, 58, 264

Latin words in, 248–250

Panini, 55–58

literature in, 83, 108

Paradigmatic change, 10

modifiers in, 96–99

Paradise Lost (Milton), 16, 167, 172

nonfinite forms, 102–103

Paralanguage, 8

noun declensions of, 67

Parataxis, in Old English, 107

nouns in, 93–96

Participles, 101–102, 135

personal pronouns, 99–100

Parts of speech, 3–4, 242–243

preterit-present verbs, 102, 104

Partridge, Eric, 155, 227, 246

pronouns in, 99–101

Past tense, 4, 13, 74

pronunciation and spelling in, 86–90

Pastoral Care, (Pope Gregory), 83

relative pronouns, 101

Pearl poet, 115–116

stress, 90

Patent Office Gazette, 224

342

index

Peasants’ Revolt, 113–114

Pound, Louise, 196, 214

Pedersen, Holger, 35, 37

Prakrits, 58

Pederson, Lee, 196, 204

loanwords from, 58

Peel, Sir Robert, 243

Prefixes, 4, 230–231

Pejoration, 210, 213–214

blendings and, 240

Pennsylvania Dutch, 62

from other languages, 231–232

Pepys, Samuel, 162, 174, 177–178

voguish, 234

Pericles, 169

Prelanguage, 13

Persian, loanwords from, 247, 263, 266–267

Pre–Old English, 78

Person, verb endings for, 65–66, 101–102,

Prepositions, 179

134–135, 176–177

Prescriptive grammar, 161, 169

Personal pronouns, 99–100, 130–132,

Present tense

164–168

in Germanic languagues, 69

in early Modern English, 164–170

in Old English, 101–102

forms of, 169–170

Preterit

in Middle English, 130–132

in Germanic languages, 69

nominative and objective, 165, 167, 169

in Old English, 102, 104

in Old English, 99–100

Preterit-present verbs, 69, 104

Persuasion (Austen), 222

Preterit system, of Old English, 69

Petrarch, 61

Priestley, Joseph, 159

Phillips, Edward, 157

Primary stress, 28, 228

Philological Society of London, 181

Principal parts, 103

Philosophy of Rhetoric (Campbell), 159, 168

Prodigal Son, 109–116, 137, 180

Phoenician, 36

Products, common words from, 243–245

Phoneme, 32–33

Progress in Language (Jespersen), 170

Phonetic alphabet, 20, 34

Progressive verb forms, 178, 202

Phonetic transcription, 27–29, 33–34

Pronouns, 99–101, 129–133, 164–170

of Shakespearean English, 154

in British and American English, 188–189

Phonogram, 35

case for, 169–170

Phonological space, 32

demonstrative, 96–97, 132

Phonology, 2, 145, 206

in early Modern English, 163–164

Phrygian, 54

interrogative and relative, 100–101,

Pictish language, 61

133, 168

Picts, 61

in Old English, 99–101

Pidgin, 197

personal, 164–168

Piers Plowman (Langland), 115

possessive, 97, 122, 162, 165, 167

Pirates of Penzance, The, 46

relative and interrogative, 100–101, 168

Pitch, 70

semantic marking for sex and, 220–222

Place names, words from, 229, 244

Pronunciation

Place of articulation, of consonants, 21–22

of compounds, 227

Plosives, 23

in early Modern English, 46–47, 141,

Plural adjectives, 98

151–151, 190–193

Plurals, 67, 94, 96, 129–130

hypercorrect, 32, 150, 169

dative, 235

in Middle English, 122–128

irregular, 17, 161

national differences in, 190–193

neuter, 161, 232

in Old English, 86–90

in Old English, 263

retarded and advanced, 146

uninflected, 161

in Shakespeare, 146–147, 150–152

Polish language, 39, 51, 59

spelling and, 86–90

loanwords from, 266

Pronunciation spelling, 47

Polynesia, loanwords from, 54, 265, 267

Pronouncing Dictionary (Kenyon and Knott),

Pooh-pooh theory, 13, 226

163

Pope, Alexander, 148

Proper names

Popular loanwords, 248

as amalgamated compounds, 229

Portmanteau words, 239

common words from, 243–245

Portuguese, 38–39, 51, 60, 251

Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and

loanwords from, 258–259

Ascertaining the English Tongue

Possessive pronouns

(Swift), 159

as genitive markers, 161–163

Propriety Ascertained (Elphinston), 144

neuter, 167

Prosodic signals, 4–5

Postman Always Rings Twice, The (Cain), 185

Proto-Germanic languages, 62, 68–69, 75, 93

Postpositions, 68–69

voiceless fricatives in, 73–74

index

343

Proto-Indo-European, 50, 68

Rudiments of English Grammar

Proto-Indo-European Syntax (Lehmann), 50, 68

(Priestley), 159

Proto-World speech, 55

Ruhlen, Merritt, 18, 54, 77

Provençal, 60

Rules of English usage, 188, 206

Publication of the American Dialect Society

Runic symbols, 39–41, 68, 85

(PADS), 196

wynn, 116

Purism, 158–159, 174, 188–189

Russian language, 9

Puritan Revolution, 140

loanwords from, 234, 266, 267

Q

S

Quakers, 166

s,

Qualitative vowel changes, 125–126

shapes of, 37, 39, 41, 116

Quantitative vowel changes, 126–127, 149

Samoyed, 54

Quechua, 54

Sanskrit, 31, 51, 55, 58, 64–65

declension in, 67

R

gender in, 91

Radio, first public broadcast, 182

loanwords from, 263–264, 267

Ragnar Lothbrok, 82

suppletive verbs in, 105

-re, British use of, 193

Sarah (chimpanzee), 14–15

Read, Allen Walker, 236–237

Satem languages, 55

Rebus, 35–36

Saxons, 79–80

Received pronunciation. See RP

Scale of Perfection (Hilton), 114

Received Standard English, 150

Scandinavian languages, 62, 84, 90

Reconstruction of language forms, 55, 66

English language development and, 84

Reflexive constructions, 179

loanwords from, 83, 115, 173, 175,

Regional dialects, 195–196

253–254

Register, 11, 195

Scandinavians. See Vikings

Relative pronouns, 168

Schmidt, Alexander, 170

Renaissance, spelling, 142–143

Schwa

Respellings, etymological, 143

definition of, 25

Retarded pronunciations, 146

final unstressed, 127–128

Retroflex liquid, 24

glide, 28

Revelations of Divine Love (Juliana of

intrusive, 31

Norwich), 114

loss in final syllables, 127–128

Rhotacism, 74, 94

Scots language, 9, 62

Richard III (Shakespeare), 178–179

Irish English and, 200–201

Rivals, The (Sheridan), 215

Scotus, John Duns, 243

r-less speech, 27, 197

Scribal -e, 127

Robert the Devil, 113–114

Script, 40. See also Handwriting; Insular hand;

Robert the Magnificent, 113–114

National hands

Rolle, Richard, 136

-se, American use of, 193

Rollo (duke of Normandy), 114

Secondary stress, 29

Roman alphabet

Second language, English as, 199

Anglo-Saxon, 40–41

Second Sound Shift, 75

Greek alphabet and, 37–40

Semantic change, 209, 222

Romance languages, 11, 37–38

circumstances of, 218–222

Roman Empire

inevitability of, 222

Britain in, 79–81

Semantic contamination, 253

Romanian, 60

Semantic marking, for sex, 220–222

Romany (Gypsy), 58, 264

Semantics

loanwords from, 58

change of meaning and, 206–222

Roosevelt, Theodore, 194

defined, 207

Root, 224

Semitic languages, 53

Root-consonant stems, 95

loanwords from, 263

Root creation, 224–225

Semitic writing, 36–37

Rosenbach, 68

Semivowels, 23, 43

“Rosemary” (from Herball by Banckes), 152

Sense, 209

Rounded vowels, 25

Serbo-Croatian, 59, 266

Royal Society, 140

Serjeantson, Mary, 248–250, 256, 268

RP (received pronunciation), 24

Sex

r-stems, 94

gender, nouns and, 129

344

index

Sex (cont.)

Society of Friends (Quakers), 166

semantic marking for, 220–222

Solecism, 189

See also Gender

Soliloquies (Saint Augustine), 83

Shakespeare, William, 139–140

Solon’s laws, writing of, 36

adverbs in, 164, 238

Some Universals of Grammar (Greenberg,

case forms in, 169

Joseph), 67

First Folio of, 142

Sorbian, 59

genitives in, 162

Sound(s), 20–34, 41–47

Henry IV (I), 154, 162, 172

of present-day English, 20–34

history of, 139

writing of, 35–48

homophones in, 7, 146

Sound associations, 213

inverse spellings in, 151

Sound change

-ly suffix in, 164

causes of, 31–32

personal pronouns in, 165–166

kinds of, 29–31

prepositions in, 179

Sound quality, 7

pronouns in, 162, 168

Sound system, 2

pronunciation in, 153–154

South Africa, English in, 199

puns in, 7, 124

Southern dialect (England), 119, 122–123, 128, 131

specialization in, 210

Southern dialect (U.S.), 195

spelling and, 142–143

South Midland dialect (U.S.), 195

stress in, 151

South Slavic, 59

syntax in, 168

Spamalot, 115

th-forms in, 166

Spanish

uninflected plurals, 161

loanwords from, 258–259, 265–267

vowel sounds and, 146

Specialization, 210–211

who in, 170

Spectator (Addison and Steele), 170, 187

y-forms in, 166

Speech

See also individual works

gestures and, 6

Shakespeare-Lexicon (Schmidt), 170

language as, 1

Shakespeare’s Pronunciation (Kökeritz), 146,

organs of, 20–21

151–152

writing and, 6–8

Shaw, George Bernard, 17

Spelling

Shepherds’ Calendar, 161

British and American, 193–194

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 200

of compounds, 22, 78

Sheridan, Thomas, 144, 170, 200

in early Modern English, 24–25, 141

Shibboleths, 188

of English consonant sounds, 41–43

Shifting, 224

of English vowel sounds, 43–46

Shortening

historical influences on, 17, 47

of vowels, 126–127

illustrations in, 152–153

of words, 235–239

inverse, 151

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical

in Middle English, 116–119

Principles, 190

pronunciation and, 46–47

Short Introduction to English Grammar (Lowth),

reform, 8, 47, 194

12, 159–160, 168

transliteration and, 141–144

Short syllables, 128

Spelling pronunciation, 32, 141

Short vowels, stressed, 147–149

Spenser, 161

Sibilants, 23

Spirants, 23

Signs, language, 5–8

Sprachbund, 60

Singular adjectives, 98

Spread vowels, 25

Sino-Tibetan languages, 54

Square brackets, use of, 33

Sir Francis Drake, 139

Standard English, 195

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 115, 239

Standard language, 119–121, 156

Skeat, Walter W., 47, 108

Star Wars, 115

Slang, 198

Statute of Pleadings, 112

Slashes, in writing phonemes, 33

Steinmetz, Sol, 251

Slavic languages, 59

Stems, 65, 93–95

loanwords from, 266

Stephen, J. K., 238

Slovak, 39, 59

Stops, 23, 42

Slovenian, 39, 59

Strabo, 59

Smoothing, 124

Stress

Social change, 10

in American and British, 202

Social dialects, 196–198

in early Modern English, 147–149, 151

index

345

indication of, 28–29

Taino loanwords, 258

in Irish English, 201

Talking

in Old English, 123

by nonhuman animals, 14–15

Stressed short vowels, 147

origins of, 6–8

Stroke letters, 41

Tamil, 54

Strong declensions, 70, 95, 97–98

Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare), 166

Strong verbs, 69

Technology, new words from, 209, 240, 245

classes of, 69

Telegu, 54

in Old English, 101–104

Television, first high-definition, 182

Style

Tempest (Shakespeare), 179

defined, 198

Tempo, 4–5, 30, 32

variation between British and American

Tense vowel, 26

English, 198–199

th, 22

Subjective meaning, 212

in abstract nouns, 231

Subject of verb, in Old English, 107

in diagraph, 116

Subjunctive form, 101–102

in Greek, 38, 71–72, 143

Subjunctive mood, 106–107

Norman scribes and, 41

Sub-Saharan languages, 53

spelling and, 143

Substratum theory, 31–32

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 217

Suckling, John, 169

Thematic vowel, 65

Suffixes, 4

th-forms, 72, 166, 168, 176

from French, 232–234

Thinking, in language, 15

in Old English, 230–232

Third Barnhart Dictionary of New

from other languages, 52, 232

English, 251

Sullivan, Arthur, 46

Thomas, Lewis, 1

Superlative adjectives and adverbs

Thorn (letter), 41

in Early Modern English, 164, 236

Thou, 72, 99, 131, 134–135, 165–166

in Middle English, 133

Thracian, 55

in Old English, 133

Tibetan, 54

Superscript, 71, 142

Tilde, 39

Superstratum theory, 32

Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare), 161

Suppletive form, 105

“To a Mouse” (Burns), 9

Svarabhakti, 31

Tocharian, 58–59

Svein Forkbeard, 83

Tolkien, J. R. R., 85

Swahili, 1, 53

Tone, 7, 70

Swedish, 39, 51, 62, 64, 249

Trade names, 224

loanwords from, 254, 267

as common words, 224

Swift, Jonathan, 147, 150, 151, 159, 200

Trafalgar, British victory of, 181

Syllabaries, 35–26

Transcription, 33–34

in Japanese, 8

broad, 33

Syllables, open and closed, 126

differing, 28

Symbolic words, 225

narrow, 33

Symbols, for Greek vowels and

Transfer of meaning from other languages,

consonants, 36–37

210–213

Synchronic variation, 11

Translation, 7

Syncope, 30, 122

Transliteration, 7

Synecdoche, 212

Treaty of Waitangi, 181

Synesthesia, 211

Trigraphs, 39

Synge, John Millington, 200

Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare), 160, 167, 211

Synod of Whitby, 78

Trudgill, Peter, 198

Syntagmatic change, 10

Tryggvason, Olaf, 79

Syntax

Tucker, Susie I., 218

of American and British, 187–188

Tudor monarchs, Irish English and,

of Old English, 105–108

113, 200

Synthetic, 4

Turkish language, 7–8

Synthetic language, 4, 164

loanwords from, 266

System, language as, 25

Turner, Lorenzo Dow, 205, 265

Tuscan Italian, 61

Twelfth Night (Shakespeare), 169

T

Two Gentlemen of Verona, The (Shakespeare),

Table Alphabeticall, A (Cawdrey), 139, 157

146, 179

Taboo, 214–217

Tyler, Wat, 114

346

index

-type, as suffix, 233

as English people, 82–84

Typological classification, 52–53

first conquest of Britain, 82–83

Norman Conquest and, 113

Northmen, 83–84, 113

U

second conquest of Britain, 83–84

Ukrainian, 59

See also Danes; Scandinavian languages

Ultimate source, 248

Virgules, 33

Umlaut, 39

Visigoths, 63

Uninflected genitive, 163

Vocabulary, 2–3, 90–92, 115–116

Uninflected plurals, 161

in early Modern English, 140–141

United Kingdom. See Britain

foreign influences on, 115–116

United States

Germanic word stock of, 90–91

English in, 11

of Old English, 90–92

pronunciation in, 46–47

See also Semantics; Word(s)

See also African-American English;

Vocalization

American English

in Middle English, 125

Units of language, 2

and paralanguage, 8

Universal Etymological English Dictionary

See also Speech

(Bailey), 157

Vocative case, 66

Unmarked words, 220

Vogue words, 219–220

Unreleased stops, 33

Voice, of consonants, 21–23, 27

Unrounded vowels, 25, 28, 123, 147, 192

Voiced fricatives, in Middle English, 21–23

Unrounding, 123

Voiceless fricatives, 22–23, 27, 30–31, 72

Unstressed syllables, 29

Proto-Germanic, 73–74

Unstressed vowels, 45–46

VO languages, 68–69

leveling of, 127

Volta, Alessandro, 243

Ural-Altaic languages, 54

Vowels, 25–28, 43–46, 144–149

Uralic languages, 54

of current English, 25–28

Urdu, 58, 264

in early Modern English, 144–149

Usage

Great Vowel Shift and, 144–147

in 18th century, 158–160

Greek, 36–37

rules in British and American, 12–13, 188–189

intrusive, 31

Uto-Aztecan languages, 54

lengthening and shortening, 126–127

length of, 27

leveling of unstressed, 127

V

in Middle English, 118–119

Van Buren, Martin, 236

in Old English, 86–87

Velar consonants, 29, 45, 55, 88–89

quantitative changes in, 126–127, 149

Velum, 21, 23–24

before [r], 28

Venus and Adonis, 176

shift of, 144–147

Verbal noun, 135, 179, 231

stressed, 28–29, 147–148

Verb endings, Indo-European, 65–67

svarabhakti, 31

Verb inflections, 65

thematic, 65

Verb phrases, in Old English, 97, 106

unstressed, 29

Verbs, 101–105, 133–135, 170–179

Vowel sounds, spellings of English, 43–46

adjectives converted, 242

Vowels plus [r], spellings of, 45

classes of strong verbs, 69, 170–176

Vowel symbols, 25–26, 36–37, 86–87

conjugation of, 101, 103, 134

Vulgar (popular) Latin, 11, 60

other constructions of, 179

contracted forms of, 177–178

definition of, 3

W

in early Modern English, 170–179

Walker, John, 144

endings for person and number, 176–177

Wallis, John, 159

expanded forms of, 178–179

Walloon language, 60

in Middle English, 133–135, 170–179

Washoe (chimpanzee), 14–15

nonfinite forms, 102–103

Weak declension, 70, 93–95, 97

in Old English, 101–105

Weak verbs, 69–70

Verner, Karl, 73–74

in Old English, 101–103

Verner’s Law, 73–74

Web browser, 182

Vietnamese, loanwords from, 267

Webster, Noah, 181, 193

Vikings

pronunciations recommended by, 150

languages, 198

spelling and, 46–47, 150

index

347

Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (Gilman),

Word choice, national differences in, 185–187

189, 198

Word order, 4

Wedge, 39

in Indo-European languages, 67–69

Welsh (Cymric) Celtic language, 61–62

in Middle English, 135–136

Wendish, 59

in Old English, 92, 107

West Germanic languages, 74–76

Word parts, combining, 242–243

West Midland dialect, 119

World, The (periodical), 218

West Saxon dialect, 85–86

World English, 199–202

West Slavic, 59

World War I, 182

wh, 41, 43, 89, 117, 122

World War II, 182

White, Richard Grant, 174

World Wide Web, 10, 182

Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 15–16

Wright, Joseph, 123

Whorf hypothesis, 15, 207

Writing, 6–8, 35–48

Who/whom, 124, 133, 168, 188

Wulfila, bishop of the Visigoths, 63, 95

Wiki, 10

Wulfstan, 84

Wikipedia, 10

Wycliffe, John, 113–114, 137

William of Orange, 140

Wyld, Henry C., 146, 150–151, 169

William the Conqueror, 79, 113

Wynn (letter), 41

Woden, 80

Word(s), 206–223

background of, 206–207

Y

blending, 239–241

Ye, 22, 42, 99, 142, 152–153,

creating new words from old, 224–227

165–167

distribution of new, 245–246

Yeats, William Butler, 200

echoic, 8, 225

Yiddish, 62

foreign elements in, 247–268

Hebrew and, 62, 262–263

generalization and specialization of, 210–211

influence of, 141, 267

intensifiers and, 217–218

loanwords from, 262

of learned origin, 219–210

Yogh (letter), 116, 137

meanings and, 206–207

Yo-he-ho theory, 13

new uses of, 242–245

Youse, 167

and parts of words, 230–232

-y suffixes, 229, 231–232

pejoration and amelioration of, 213–214

from place names, 244

from proper names, 243–245

semantic changes, 218–222

Z

semantics and meaning, 207–210

Zachrisson, R. E., 152

shortening of, 235–239

Zarathustra (Zoroaster), Avestan language of, 58

sources of, 245–246

Zeus, 50

taboo and euphemism of, 214–217

Zoroastrians, 58

transfer of meaning in, 211–213

z-stems, 94

Document Outline

- Front Cover

- Title Page

- Copyright

- CONTENTS

- PREFACE

- CHAPTER 1 Language and the English Language: An Introduction

- A Definition of Language

- Language as System

- Grammatical Signals

- Language as Signs

- Language as Vocal

- Writing and Speech

- Gestures and Speech

- Language as Conventional

- Language Change

- The Notion of Linguistic Corruption

- Language Variation

- Correctness and Acceptability

- Language as Human

- Theories of the Origin of Language

- Innate Language Ability

- Do Birds and Beasts Really Talk?

- Language as Communication

- Other Characteristics of Language

- Why Study the History of English?

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 2 The Sounds of Current English

- The Organs of Speech

- Consonants of Current English

- Vowels of Current English

- Vowels before [r]

- Stress

- Unstressed Vowels

- Kinds of Sound Change

- Assimilation: Sounds Become More Alike

- Dissimilation: Sounds Become Less Alike

- Elision: Sounds Are Omitted

- Intrusion: Sounds Are Added

- Metathesis: Sounds Are Reordered

- Causes of Sound Change

- The Phoneme

- Differing Transcriptions

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 3 Letters and Sounds: A Brief History of Writing

- Ideographic and Syllabic Writing

- From Semitic Writing to the Greek Alphabet

- The Greek Vowel and Consonant Symbols

- The Romans Adopt the Greek Alphabet

- Later Developments of the Roman and Greek Alphabets

- The Use of Digraphs

- Additional Symbols

- The History of English Writing

- The Germanic Runes

- The Anglo-Saxon Roman Alphabet

- The Spelling of English Consonant Sounds

- Stops

- Fricatives

- Affricates

- Nasals

- Liquids

- Semivowels

- The Spelling of English Vowel Sounds

- Front Vowels

- Central Vowel

- Back Vowels

- Diphthongs

- Vowels plus [r]

- Unstressed Vowels

- Spelling Pronunciations and Pronunciation Spellings

- Writing and History

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 4 The Backgrounds of English

- Indo-European Origins

- Indo-European Culture

- The Indo-European Homeland

- How Indo-European Was Discovered

- Language Typology and Language Families

- Non-Indo-European Languages

- Main Divisions of the Indo-European Group

- Indo-Iranian

- Armenian and Albanian

- Tocharian

- Anatolian

- Balto-Slavic

- Hellenic

- Italic

- Celtic

- Germanic

- Cognate Words in the Indo-European Languages

- Inflection in the Indo-European Languages

- Some Verb Inflections

- Some Noun Inflections

- Word Order in the Indo-European Languages

- Major Changes from Indo-European to Germanic

- First Sound Shift

- Grimm’s Law

- Verner’s Law

- The Sequence of the First Sound Shift

- West Germanic Languages

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 5 The Old English Period (449–1100)

- Some Key Events in the Old English Period

- History of the Anglo-Saxons

- Britain before the English

- The Coming of the English

- The English in Britain

- The First Viking Conquest

- The Second Viking Conquest

- The Scandinavians Become English

- The Golden Age of Old English

- Dialects of Old English

- Pronunciation and Spelling

- Vowels

- Consonants

- Handwriting

- Stress

- Vocabulary

- The Germanic Word Stock

- Gender in Old English

- Grammar, Concord, and Inflection

- Inflection

- Nouns

- i-Umlaut

- Modern Survivals of Case and Number

- Modifiers

- Demonstratives

- Adjectives

- Adverbs

- Pronouns

- Personal Pronouns

- Interrogative and Relative Pronouns

- Verbs

- Indicative Forms of Verbs

- Subjunctive and Imperative Forms

- Nonfinite Forms

- Weak Verbs

- Strong Verbs

- Preterit-Present Verbs

- Suppletive Verbs

- Syntax

- Old English Illustrated

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 6 The Middle English Period (1100–1500)

- Some Key Events in the Middle English Period

- The Background of the Norman Conquest

- The Reascendancy of English

- Foreign Influences on Vocabulary

- Middle English Spelling

- Consonants

- Vowels

- The Rise of a London Standard

- Changes in Pronunciation

- Principal Consonant Changes

- Middle English Vowels

- Changes in Diphthongs

- Lengthening and Shortening of Vowels

- Leveling of Unstressed Vowels

- Loss of Schwa in Final Syllables

- Changes in Grammar

- Reduction of Inflections

- Loss of Grammatical Gender

- Nouns, Pronouns, and Adjectives

- The Inflection of Nouns

- Personal Pronouns

- Demonstrative Pronouns

- Interrogative and Relative Pronouns

- Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

- Verbs

- Personal Endings

- Participles

- Word Order

- Middle English Illustrated

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 7 The Early Modern English Period (1500–1800): Society, Spellings, and Sounds

- Some Key Events in the Early Modern Period

- The Transition from Middle to Modern English

- Expansion of the English Vocabulary

- Innovation of Pronunciation and Conservation of Spelling

- The Orthography of Early Modern English

- The Great Vowel Shift

- Other Vowels

- Stressed Short Vowels

- Diphthongs

- Quantitative Vowel Changes

- Early Modern English Consonants

- Evidence for Early Modern Pronunciation

- Stress

- Scholarly Studies

- Early Modern English Illustrated

- Spelling

- Pronunciation

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 8 The Early Modern English Period (1500–1800): Forms, Syntax, and Usage

- The Study of Language

- Early Dictionaries

- Eighteenth-Century Attitudes toward Grammar and Usage

- Nouns

- Irregular Plurals

- His-Genitive

- Group Genitive

- Uninflected Genitive

- Adjectives and Adverbs

- Pronouns

- Personal Pronouns

- Relative and Interrogative Pronouns

- Case Forms of the Pronouns

- Verbs

- Classes of Strong Verbs

- Endings for Person and Number

- Contracted Forms

- Expanded Verb Forms

- Other Verbal Constructions

- Prepositions

- Early Modern English Further Illustrated

- CHAPTER 9 Late Modern English (1800–Present)

- Some Key Events in the Late Modern Period

- The National Varieties of English

- Conservatism and Innovation in American English

- National Differences in Word Choice

- American Infiltration of the British Word Stock

- Syntactical and Morphological Differences

- British and American Purism

- Dictionaries and the Facts

- National Differences in Pronunciation

- British and American Spelling

- Variation within National Varieties

- Kinds of Variation

- Regional Dialects

- Ethnic and Social Dialects

- Stylistic Variation

- Variation within British English

- World English

- Irish English

- Indian English

- The Essential Oneness of All English

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 10 Words and Meanings

- Semantics and Change of Meaning

- Variable and Vague Meanings

- Etymology and Meaning

- How Meaning Changes

- Generalization and Specialization

- Transfer of Meaning

- Association of Ideas

- Transfer from Other Languages

- Sound Associations

- Pejoration and Amelioration

- Taboo and Euphemism

- The Fate of Intensifying Words

- Some Circumstances of Semantic Change

- Vogue for Words of Learned Origin

- Language and Semantic Marking

- Semantic Change Is Inevitable

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 11 New Words from Old

- Creating Words

- Root Creations

- Echoic Words

- Ejaculations

- Combining Words: Compounding

- Spelling and Pronunciation of Compounds

- Amalgamated Compounds

- Function and Form of Compounds

- Combining Word Parts: Affixing

- Affixes from Old English

- Affixes from Other Languages

- Voguish Affixes

- Shortening Words

- Clipped Forms

- Initialisms: Alphabetisms and Acronyms

- Apheretic and Aphetic Forms

- Back-Formations

- Blending Words

- New Morphemes from Blending

- Folk Etymology

- Shifting Words to New Uses

- One Part of Speech to Another

- Common Words from Proper Names

- Sources of New Words

- Distribution of New Words

- For Further Reading

- CHAPTER 12 Foreign Elements in the English Word Stock

- Popular and Learned Loanwords

- Latin and Greek Loanwords

- Latin Influence in the Germanic Period

- Latin Words in Old English

- Latin Words Borrowed in Middle English Times

- Latin Words Borrowed in Modern English Times

- Greek Loanwords

- Celtic Loanwords

- Scandinavian Loanwords

- Old and Middle English Borrowings

- Modern English Borrowings

- French Loanwords

- Middle English Borrowings

- Later French Loanwords

- Spanish and Portuguese Loanwords

- Italian Loanwords

- Germanic Loanwords

- Loanwords from Low German

- Loanwords from High German

- Loanwords from the East

- Near East

- Iran and India

- Far East and Australasia

- Other Sources

- Loanwords from African Languages

- Slavic, Hungarian, Turkish, and American Indian

- The Sources of Recent Loanwords

- English Remains English

- For Further Reading

- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

- GLOSSARY

- INDEX OF MODERN ENGLISH WORDS AND AFFIXES

- INDEX OF PERSONS, PLACES, AND TOPICS

Table of Contents

Preface

PR E FAC E

c h a p t e r

A Definition of Language

Grammatical Signals

Language as Signs

Language as Vocal

Gestures and Speech

Language Change

Language Variation

Correctness and Acceptability

Language as Human

Innate Language Ability

Language as Communication

Other Characteristics of Language

Why Study the History of English?

For Further Reading

2

Consonants of Current English

Vowels of Current English

Vowels before [r]

Unstressed Vowels

Dissimilation: Sounds Become Less Alike

Intrusion: Sounds Are Added

The Phoneme

Differing Transcriptions

34

3

From Semitic Writing to the Greek Alphabet

The Romans Adopt the Greek Alphabet

Later Developments of the Roman and Greek Alphabets

The Use of Digraphs

The History of English Writing

The Spelling of English Consonant Sounds

Stops

Affricates

Central Vowel

Diphthongs

Spelling Pronunciations and Pronunciation Spellings

Writing and History

48

4

Indo-European Origins

How Indo-European Was Discovered

Language Typology and Language Families

Non-Indo-European Languages

Main Divisions of the Indo-European Group

Armenian and Albanian

Anatolian

Hellenic