Borrowings in the English Vocabulary. Main Groups of Loan Words in English. Translation Loans and Semantic Borrowings

Greek Borrowings

Greek borrowings were usually adopted through Latin and French. Many Latin Christian terms were of Greek origin: abbot, bishop, school, Christ, monk; chair, police, policy, chronicle came to English from Greek through Latin and French.

The direct borrowing of the Greek words into English started only in the period of the Renaissance: literature owes the following terms – tragedy, comedy, drama… Greek elements, affixes and roots are widely used in English to create new terms: telephone, photography, telegramme etc.