A posteriori

INFLECTIVE: An inflective or inflected language is one like Latin, German, or Anglo-Saxon, in which special endings called declensions appear on the end of noun-stems to indicate case. Contrast with analytic and agglutinative languages.

INFORMANT: In folklore studies, anthropology, and linguistics, an informant is the local individual who tells the folklorist a folktale, explains a custom to an anthropologist, or who responds to an interview or dialect study made by a linguist, i.e., a "local source."

INHABITED INITIAL: See discussion under initial, below.

INITIAL: An enlarged, decorated letter at the beginning of a story, chapter, poem, or section of text in a medieval manuscript. This is also called an initial letter. Initials may be inhabited (having a small creature, animal, or person depicted inside the letter without obvious connection to the text's contents), historiated (having an illustration of a scene or event that clearly connects with the story or subject-matter described in the text), or decorated (having elaborate abstract designs unrelated to the text). See cadel.

INITIALISM: Any word, whether an acronym or an alphabetism, formed from the first letters of other words. See discussion under acronym for more information.

INITIAL LETTER: Another term for an initial. See above.

INK: According to Michelle P. Brown,

The word [ink] derives from the Latin encaustum (“burnt in”), since the gallic and tannic acids in ink and the oxidation of its ingredients cause it to eat into the writing surface. The basis of medieval ink was a solution of gall (from gallnuts) and gum, colored by the addition of carbon (lampblack) and/or iron salts. The ferrous ink produced by iron salts sometimes faded to a red-brown or yellow. Copper salts were occasionally used too, sometimes fading to gray-green. Ink was used for drawing and ruling as well as for writing and, when diluted, could be applied with a brush as a wash.” (73)

NB: Gallnuts aren’t actually nuts. They are swellings that form in the bark of an oak tree after it has been stung by an insect laying its eggs. The black seepage from this swellings forms the primary ingredient in medieval manuscript ink in Western Europe, though in some Mediterranean regions, squid ink was used. In poorer monasteries, ash diluted in water might be used as a cheap substitute.

INKHORN TERM: A word--often experimental or pompous--introduced into English during the Renaissance, especially one used primarily in writing rather than everyday conversation. Thomas Wilson wrote in his Arte of Rhetorique (1553):

Among all other lessons this should first be learned, that wee never affect any straunge ynkehorne termes, but to speake as is commonly received: neither seeking to be over fine or yet living over-carelesse, using our speeche as most men doe, and ordering our wittes as the fewest have done. Some seeke so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mothers language. And I dare sweare this, if some of their mothers were alive, thei were not able to tell what they say: and yet these fine English clerkes will say, they speake in their mother tongue, if a man should charge them for counterfeiting the Kings English.

Michael Quinion lists some examples in a web article examples such as follows: anacephalize, adnichilate, eximious, exolete, illecebrous, ingent, and obtestate.

INLAND SOUTHERN: A subdialect of southern. More information: TBA.