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Among the changes in the vocabulary we can distinguish losses of words or their meanings, replacements and additions.
a) Losses
Like many other lexical changes losses were connected with events in external history: with the changing conditions of life and the obsolescence of many medieval concepts and customs.
Some regulations and institutions of OE kingdoms were cancelled or forgotten in the ME period. OE witena3emōt ‘assembly of the elders’ ceased to exist under the Norman rule; OE Dane3eld, the tax paid to the Scandinavians, was not collected after the collapse of the Danish Empire — both words have survived only as historical terms. OE wer3eld was a fine paid by the murderer to the family of the murdered man; the word became obsolete together with the custom.
Some rituals of the heathen religion were abandoned — after the introduction of Christianity — and their names dropped out of use, e.g. OE tiber, blōt which meant ‘sacrifice’.
In OE there were many groups of synonyms whose differentiation became irrelevant in ME; therefore some of the synonyms fell out of use. For instance, OE here, fierd, werod indicated an armed force, an army (here must have had a negative connotation as it was used only in reference to a hostile army, the Danes). The distinction between the synonyms was lost when they were all replaced by the ME borrowings from French army, troop.
The English vocabulary suffered considerable losses when a whole stylistic stratum of words, the specific OE poetic vocabulary, went out of use together with the genre of OE poetry; those were numerous poetic synonyms of ordinary, neutral words, stock metaphors and traditional “kennings”.
Many words current in ME fell out of use and became obsolete in NE, e.g.: ME chapman ‘pedlar’, ME romare ‘pilgrim to Rome’, ME outridere ‘rider visiting the manors of a monastery’, ME gypoun ‘short jacket’.
Losses could also affect the plane of content. Though the word survived, some of its meanings became obsolete. Thus OE sift had the meaning ‘price of a wife’ connected with one of the early meanings of the verb 3yfan (NE give) ‘give in marriage’; OE sellan lost the meaning ‘give’ which it could express in OE alongside ‘sell’; OE talu meant ‘number, series’ and ‘story, narrative’, while its ME and NE descendant tale retained only the latter meanings.
The foreign influence on the English vocabulary in the age of the Renaissance and in the succeeding centuries was not restricted to Latin and Greek. The influx of French words continued and reached new peaks in the late 15th and in the late 17th c.
French borrowings of the later periods mainly pertain to diplomatic relations, social life, art and fashions. French remained the international language of diplomacy for several hundred years; Paris led the fashion in dress, food and in social life and to a certain extent in art and literature; finally, the political events in France in the 18th—19th c. were of world-wide significance. All these external conditions are reflected in French loans. Examples of diplomatic terms are attaché, communiqué, dossier; the words ball, beau, cortege, cafe, coquette, hotel, picnic, restaurant refer to social life; ballet, ensemble, essay, genre pertain to art; military terms are brigade, corps, manoeuvre, marine, police, reconnaissance; fashions in dress and food are illustrated by words like blouse, chemise, corsage, cravat, champagne, menu, soup. Words of miscellaneous character are: comrade, detail, entrance, essay, machine, moustache, progress, ticket.
As seen from the lists, later French borrowings differ widely from the loan-words adopted in ME. Most of them have not been completely assimilated and have retained a foreign appearance to the present day — note their spellings, the sounds and the position of the stress. Words like genre and restaurant have nasalised vowels and a French spelling: police, fatigue, marine receive the stress on the last syllable and are pronounced with long [i:] indicated by the letter i like French words; the digraph ch stands for [∫] in machine, in beau the letters eau have also retained the sound value of the French prototype [o:].
In addition to the three main sources — Greek, Latin and French, English speakers of the NE period borrowed freely from many other languages. It has been estimated that even in the 17th c. the English vocabulary contained words derived from no less than fifty foreign tongues. We shall mention only the most important ones.
The main contributors to the vocabulary were Italian, Dutch, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Russian. A number of words were adopted from languages of other countries and continents, which came into contact with English: Persian, Chinese, Hungarian, Turkish, Malayan, Polynesian, the native languages of India and America.
Next to French, Latin and Scandinavian, English owes the greatest number of foreign words to Italian, though many of them, like Latin loan-words, entered the English language through French. A few early borrowings pertain to commercial and military affairs while the vast majority of words are related to art, music and literature, which is a natural consequence of the fact that Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance movement and of the revival of interest in art.
In the 14th c. English imported the Italian words ducato, million, florin (from the name of Florence, where the coin was minted), pistol, cartridge, alarm (probably borrowed from French but traced to Italian all’ arme ‘all to arms’). Italian words relating to art are well known to speakers of all European languages. Examples of musical terms adopted in English are: aria, bass, cello (genetically, a diminutive suffix in violoncello), concerto, duet, finale, piano, solo, sonata, soprano, tenor, violin.
The Italian loan-words balcony, cameo, corridor, cupola, design, fresco, gallery, granite, parapet, pedestal, studio reveal the priority of the Italians in certain spheres of culture. The loans replica, sonnet, stanza indicate new concepts in literature.
As seen from the examples, some loan-words retained their Italian appearance, others were Gallicised (i.e. assumed a French shape); probably they had entered the English language through French, e.g. artisan, campaign, intrigue. Many words in general use do not differ from English words either in sounds or spelling and cannot be distinguished from native words without a special study: barrack, cash, canteen, escort, gallop, laundry, manage, medal, pants, pilot; these borrowings were probably imported at an earlier date and have lost their foreign flavour.
Borrowings from Spanish came as a result of contacts with Spain in the military, commercial and political fields, due to the rivalry of England and Spain in foreign trade and colonial expansion. This is apparent from the nature of Spanish borrowings in English made in the 16th and 17th c, e.g.: armada, barricade, cannibal, cargo, embargo, escapade. Many loan-words indicated new objects and concepts encountered in the colonies: banana, canoe, chocolate, cocoa, colibri, maize, mosquito, Negro, potato, ranch, tobacco, tomato.
Replacements and Additions
Though losses proper can be illustrated by numerous examples in all periods, they played a less important role in the development of the vocabulary than replacements and additions.
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