A history of the English Language

206.
Objection to Foreign Borrowings.
The concern that the eighteenth century expressed for the purity of the language included 
what seems like an undue apprehension that English was being ruined by the intrusion of 
foreign words, especially French. Defoe observed that “an Englishman has his mouth full 
of borrow’d phrases…he is always borrowing other men’s language.”
48
And in his 
Review
(October 10, 1708) he complained: “I cannot but think that the using and 
introducing foreign terms of art or foreign words into speech while our language labours 
under no penury or scarcity of words is an intolerable grievance.” Shortly before, Dryden 
had expressed a similar feeling: “I cannot approve of their way of refining, who corrupt 
our English idiom by mixing it too much with French: that is a sophistication of 
language, not an
48 
Complete English Gentleman,
p. 220. 
The appeal to authority, 1650-1800 271

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improvement of it; a turning English into French, rather than a refining of English by 
French. We meet daily with those fops who value themselves on their travelling, and 
pretend they cannot express their meaning in English, because they would put off on us 
some French phrase of the last edition; without considering that, for aught they know, we 
have a better of our own. But these are not the men who are to refme us; their talent is to 
prescribe fashions, not words.”
49
The feeling was very common. In 1711 Addison wrote 
in the 
Spectator
(No. 165): “I have often wished, that as in our constitution there are 
several persons whose business is to watch over our laws, our liberties, and commerce, 
certain men might be set apart as superintendents of our language, to hinder any words of 
a foreign coin, from passing among us; and in particular to prohibit any French phrases 
from becoming current in this kingdom, when those of our own stamp are altogether as 
valuable.” Even quite late in the century Campbell could say, “Nay, our language is in 
greater danger of being overwhelmed by an inundation of foreign words, than of any 
other species of destruction.” 
It is not difficult to see how French was in a strong position to influence English at 
this time. The language was then at the height of its prestige. It was used at almost every 
court in Europe. The knowledge of the language among the upper classes in England was 
quite general, equaled only by the ignorance of English on the part of the French. 
Sheridan, speaking of the widespread use of Latin in the Middle Ages, says that it was 
written by all the learned of Europe “with as much fluency and facility as the polite now 
speak or write French.” Travel in France was considered a necessary part of one’s 
education, and the cultural relations between the two countries were very close. And yet 
the danger does not seem to have been acute. The number of French words admitted to 
the language in the period from 1650 to 1800 was not unusually large.
50
The 
Oxford 
English Dictionary
records a fair number that did not win permanent acceptance, but 
among those that have been retained are such useful words as 
ballet, boulevard, brunette, 
canteen, cartoon, champagne, chenille, cohesion, coiffure, connoisseur, coquette, coterie, 
dentist, negligee, patrol, pique, publicity, routine, soubrette, syndicate
. Most of these are 
words that we could ill afford to lose. Time has again done the sifting and clearly done it 
well.