A history of the English Language

167.
The Method of Introducing New Words.
The Latin words that form so important an element in the English vocabulary have 
generally entered the language through the medium of writing. Unlike the Scandinavian 
influence and to a large extent the French influence after the Norman Conquest, the 
various Latin influences, except the earliest, have been the work of churchmen and 
scholars. If the words themselves have not always been learned words, they have needed 
the help of learned people to become known. This was particularly true in the 
Renaissance. Even the words borrowed from the Romance languages in this period often 
came in through books, and the revivals and new formations from native material were 
due to the efforts of individual writers and their associates. It is impossible, of course, to 
say who was responsible for the introduction of each particular word, but in certain cases 
we can see individual writers at work—like Sir Thomas Elyot—conscious of their 
innovations and sometimes pausing to remark upon them. Another writer who introduced 
a large number of new words was Elyot’s older contemporary Sir Thomas More. To 
More we owe the words 
absurdity, acceptance, anticipate, combustible, compatible
(in 
our sense), 
comprehensible, concomitance, congratulatory, contradictory, damnability, 
denunciation, detector, dissipate, endurable, eruditely, exact, exaggerate, exasperate, 
explain, extenuate, fact, frivolous, impenitent, implacable, incorporeal, indifference, 
insinuate, inveigh, inviolable, irrefragable, monopoly, monosyllable, necessitate, 
obstruction, paradox, pretext,
and others. Elyot, besides using some of these, gives us 
accommodate, adumbrate, adumbration, analogy, animate, applicate
(as an alternative to 
the older 
apply
),
 beneficence, encyclopedia, exerp
(now spelled 
excerpt
),
 excogitate, 
excogitation, excrement, exhaust, exordium, experience
(verb), 
exterminate, frugality, 
implacability, infrequent, inimitable, irritate, modesty, placability,
etc. The lists have 
been made long,
33
galleon = 
F. 
galion,
Sp. 
galeon,
Ital. 
galeone
. 
gallery = 
F. 
galerie,
Sp., Port, and Ital. 
galeria
. 
pistol = 
F.
 pistole,
Sp. and Ital.
 pistola
. 
cochineal = 
F. 
cochenille,
Sp. 
cochinilla,
Ital. 
cocciniglia
. 
That the Italian and Spanish words borrowed by English at this time reflect the general commerce 
of ideas is clear from the fact that the same words were generally being adopted by French. Cf. 
B.H.Wind, 
Les Mots italiens introduits en français au XVI
e
siècle
(Deventer, Netherlands, 1928), 
The renaissance, 1500-1650 213

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and Richard Ruppert, 
Die spanischen Lehn-und Fremdwörter in der französischen Schriftsprache
(Munich, 1915). 
at the risk of being wearisome, in order that they might be the more impressive. So far as 
we now know, these words had not been used in English previously. In addition both 
writers employ many words that are recorded from only a few years before. And so they 
either introduced or helped to establish many new words in the language. What More and 
Elyot were doing was being done by numerous others, and it is necessary to recognize the 
importance of individuals as “makers of English” in the sixteenth and early seventeenth 
century.