A history of the English Language

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

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seventeenth centuries in the form 
grenado, palisado, escalado,
and 
cavaliero,
even when 
the correct Spanish form would have been 
granada, palisada, escalada,
and 
caballero
. 
Sometimes the influence of all these languages combined to give us our English word, as 
in the case of 
galleon,
gallery, pistol, cochineal
.
33
Thus the cosmopolitan tendency, the spirit of exploration 
and adventure, and the interest in the New World that was being opened up show 
themselves in an interesting way in the growth of our vocabulary and contributed along 
with the more intellectual forms of activity to the enrichment of the English language.