SEMINAR IV

ETYMOLOGY OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY

I. Prepare to discuss the following issues:

1. Periods of historical development of English and their

characteristics.

The historical development of the vocabulary of the English language is traditionally divided
into the Old, Middle and Modern English periods. Each of them had its own contribution to the
development of the lexis of the language.
The Old English period (450-1066)

The first Old English inscriptions were written around the fifth and sixth centuries in the
runic alphabet brought by the Anglo-Saxons. These are, however, short texts which do not yield
much information on the structure of old Germanic languages. The literary age began only after
the Christianity of England in the V century, introduced by the Roman invaders, and the first
manuscripts were glossaries of Latin words translated into Old English. The most important
literary work known since that period was an old English epic the Beowulf, written around 1000.
Most OE texts were written in the reign of King Alfred (849-899), who arranged for
many Latin words to be translated, but the total corpus is considered to be relatively small. D.
Crystal points out that “the number of words in the corpus of Old English compiled at the
University of Toronto, which contains all the texts, is only 3.5 million – the equivalent of about
30 medium-sized novels” (Crystal, 2003: 10).
The OE alphabet was very similar to the one we use today, but its distinctive feature
was the absence of capital letters. A few letters were shaped differently and some modern letters
were missing, while the numbers were only Roman. There was a great deal of variation in
spelling and the same word could be spelled differently on the same page. A marked difference
between poetic and prosaic texts is noticeable: while the majority of words in prose are close to
Modern English, words in poetic texts are different.
OE lexicon looks quite familiar and a modern English speaker can easily recognize
singan as sing , drinkan as drink, stod as stood and so on. But at the same time some words,
thought look familiar, have a different meaning in Modern English; e. g. wif refers not only to a
female spouse, but to any woman; sona meant ‘immediately’ rather than ‘in a little while’; and
meat was used in the meaning ‘food’ rather than ‘the flesh of animals used for food’.
Grammatical relations in OE were expressed by the use of inflectional ending. Only in
Middle English the inflections were lost, and the word order came to express grammatical
relations. This crucial change in the structure of the language took place in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries and is explained by the fact that it became increasingly difficult to hear and
pronounce them.
During the Old English period there was the Viking invasion of the 7-th-9-th centuries,
which had a significant impact on the development of the vocabulary, but we are going to dwell
upon it later.

1.1.2. The Middle English Period (1066-1500)

The Middle English period is characterized by a great impact of the French language,
which after the Norman Conquest, became the ruling language in the educational, administrative
and religious aspects of life. Due to that, the early materials are quite infrequent, because they
were written in Latin or French. Much of the earlier Middle English literature was of the
unknown authorship, but to the end of the period the situation had changed. Among the
prominent names of that time was Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of the famous ‘Canterbury
Stories,’ and later on the poets who are collectively known as the ‘Scottish Chaucerians’. They
all contributed greatly to the development of the language.
The language of this period is characterized by a great diversity in spelling, according
to Jackson and Zé Amvela “it was even greater than that found even in Old English. Even in an
edited text, we still find variant spelling, e.g. naure, noeure, ner, neure, all standing for never
(Jackson, Zé Amvela 2007: 30).”
What this period is particularly characterized by is the massive borrowing from French,
caused by the French-English bilingualism which was introduced by the Norman Conquest of
1066.
Today, when English is one of the major languages in the world, it requires an effort of
imagination to realize that 400 years ago English was a despised language. Only a few million of
rural people living on the British Isles used English as their mother tongue, and the rest of the
population were speaking the French language, as they found it nobler, more attractive and more
privileged. The effect of the borrowings on the balance of the vocabulary was enormous.
According to D. Crystal, by the end of the thirteenth century, some 10,000 French words had
come into English. These were mostly the words dealing with law and administration, but there
were also borrowings from such fields as art, medicine and everyday life. D. Crystal concludes
that three quarters of them are still in use today. Due to this fact English retains probably the
richest vocabulary, and most diverse shading of meaning, of any language. As B. Bryson writes,”
For almost every word we have a multiplicity of synonyms. Something is not just big; it is large,
immense, vast, capacious, bulky, massive, whooping. No other language has so many words all
saying the same thing. English is unique in possessing a synonym for each level of our culture:
popular, literary, and scholarly – so that we can, according to our background and cerebral
attainments, rise, mount, or ascend a stairway, shrink in fear, terror, or trepidation, and think,
ponder, or cognate upon a problem” (Bryson 2009: 62). However, borrowings were not the only
way of increasing the vocabulary; the other processes of word formation, such as compounding
and affixation, which were already established in Old English, continued to be used.

1.1.3. Early Modern English (1500 – 1660)

The Modern English period begins at about 1500 and lasts well into our own times. Within
the Modern English period it is customary to distinguish between Early Modern English (1500 –
1660) and Late Modern English (1660 till our own times). It should be noted that such dates as
1500 or 1660 cannot be taken literary: they are merely a convenient means of expressing the
statement that by the end of the 11th and again by the end of the 15th century changes in the
language accumulated to an extent which makes it possible for scholars to indicate the
beginning of a new period in its history.
There might be no consensus about the beginning of this period, but many consider the
invention of printing as a determining factor. Printing played a great role not only in fostering the
norms of spelling and pronunciation; it also provided more opportunities for people to write and
to give books a much wider circulation. This period includes also important scientific
discoveries and the exploration of Africa, Asia and America. But the most significant factor,
which shaped the development of the language, was the “Renaissance” – the period,
characterized by a renewed interest in the classical languages and literature, and by major
developments in sciences and arts. All these factors had a major impact on the vocabulary of the
language; a considerable number of Greek and Latin borrowings were introduced into the
language to express new concepts, techniques and innovations. In fact, it is generally
acknowledged that the increase in foreign borrowing is the most distinctive feature of the
Renaissance for English (Crystal 1995: 60).
It is generally accepted that the most prominent figure of this period was William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), whose role in the language could hardly be overestimated. The
Shakespearian impact on the lexicon is immense: his poems and plays introduced or popularized
thousands of new words in the language.
 Another distinguished work of Early Modern English was the King James Bible (1611). It
was appointed to be read in churches throughout the kingdom and had enormous influence on the
people and the language. “There are many phrases in the King James Bible that have entered the
language as idioms, though sometimes with minor changes in grammar and vocabulary, e.g. a
wolf in sheep’s clothing, in the twinkling of an eye, the salt of the Earth, can leopard change his
clothes, money is the root of all evil, if the blind lead the blind, etc. The frequency of occurrence
of such phrases in both literary and everyday language is a clear indication of the impact that the
King James Bible continues to have on contemporary English (Jackson, Zé Amvela 2007: 33).”

1. 1. 4. The Modern English Period (1800-present)

Modern English is characterized by another influx of the vocabulary, which was provoked
by three main factors: the unprecedented growth of scientific vocabulary, the emergence of
American English, which turned to be a dominant variety of the language, and other varieties
known as ‘New Englishes’.
English scientific vocabulary has been growing steadily since the Renaissance, but the
nineteenth century, due to the consequences of the industrial revolution, and as a period of
extensive scientific exploration and discovery, was the boom of innovations in the sphere of
lexis. As H. Jackson mentions, “by the end of the nineteenth century, one could actually speak of
“scientific English as a variety of the language”. A number of terminological systems covering
the whole scope of science have been formed.
A remarkable factor of the historical development of English was its establishment in the
New World and the emergence of the USA as the leading economic state of the twentieth
century. Although there are still marked differences between British and American English in the
sphere of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, the extensive growth of communication and
the development of mass media are making these varieties more and more alike.
In sociolinguistics the global spread of English has been viewed as two diasporas, the
former of which involved migration of English speakers from the present British Isles to
Australia, New Zealand and North America, and the latter transported the language to Asia and
Africa. “Those English users who left the old country for new ones brought with them their
resource of language and its potentials for change, which are always with us, though we are not
often called upon to contemplate them explicitly. Thus, the language was brought into new
socio-linguistic contexts, and these contact situations have had striking and lasting effects on
English in these regions, so that although these contemporary Englishes have much in common,
they are also unique in their grammatical innovations and tolerances, lexis, pronunciation,
idioms, and discourse (McKay, Hornberger (eds) 2010: 25).”
Though Indian English, Philippine English, Singapore English, and African Englishes have
the distinctive features of their own, vocabulary is the area in which these new Englishes best
assert themselves (Jackson, Zé Amvela 2007: 36).
As Baugh and Cable (1993:1) put it: “The diversity of cultures that find expression in it as
a reminder that the history of the English language is a story of cultures in contact during the
past 1500”. Following such reasoning, it seems inadequate to deal with loanwords simply
linguistically, and ignore the political, economic, social and technological events that brought
words like robot, Cossack, intifada, perestroika, embargo, tycoon, paparazzi, glasnost, fiasco
and the like into the scope of English vocabulary.
Nowadays borrowing takes place on an unprecedented scale, partly because of the
enormous number of new inventions in the 20th century made by people of various nationalities
and partly because international communications are much more rapid and important than a
century ago (www, international TV networks like CNN, mobile telephones, social networks
(Facebook, Twitter), Skype, etc.). As a result, foreign words enter a language like English easily,
often without any change in their spelling and pronunciation, e.g.: blitzkrieg (from German – a
swift intensive military attack, designed to defeat the opponent quickly), lunnic (the name of the
Soviet spacecraft), chernozem (from Ukrainian – dark soil), polka (a Polish folk dance), kibbutz
(from Hebrew - a collective agricultural settlement in modern Israel). To render such words into
English does not only require time, but would lose a lot in translation. English with its
“cosmopolitan vocabulary” (Baugh and Cable 1993:9) does not seem to mind the overwhelming
influx of foreign words into its ranks. Quite the opposite, it has always shown a “marked
tendency to go outside its own linguistic resources and borrow from other languages (Baugh and
Cable 1993: 10).”

2. Native element in English.

The original stock of the English vocabulary is made up of Anglo-Saxon element and English
proper element, which was partially influenced by Celtic.
Anglo-Saxon words appeared in the language around the 5th century A.D., when the
Germanic invaders migrated to the British Isles. These are the words of high frequency, like the
articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries and modal verbs (shall, will, can, may,
must), as well as verbs and nouns, denoting everyday objects and phenomena, such as the parts
of the human body (arm, foot, head, heart, chest, bone, eye, ear), domestic life (house, home,
door, floor), animals (dog, hound, sheep, swine, cow, hen, fish, goat), the natural landscape (cliff,
hill, field, hedge, meadow, wood), the calendar (day, month, sun, moon, year), some common
adjectives (black, dark, long, good, white, wide), and common verbs (become, do, eat, fly, go,
help, kiss, live, love, see, sell, send, think) (Crystal 1995: 124).
As it is obviously seen from the above, the Anglo-Saxon words are short and concise root
words, which are highly frequent in both literal and colloquial discourse. They make up the core
of the language vocabulary.

The most frequent word in English is the definite article the, and nearly all of the most frequent
hundred words are function words, such as pronouns and prepositions. Among the most frequent
words there are only a few nouns and verbs which can be said to have a meaning of their own,
and all of these words are highly ambiguous or fuzzy (words like thing or set)

There is a strong tendency, noticed by B. Bryson, to keep the Anglo-Saxon noun but to adopt a
foreign one for the adjectival form. Thus, figures are not figurish; they are digital. Eyes are not
eyeish, they are ocular. “English is unique in this tendency to marry a native noun to an adopted
adjective. Among other such pairs are mouth/oral, mind/mental, book/literary, water/aquatic,
house/domestic, moon/lunar, sun/solar, town/urban” (Bryson, 2005: 68).
The bulk of the Old English word stock has been preserved, although some items have
passed out of existence. The Anglo-Saxon element is estimated to make about 30% of the
English vocabulary. The semantic and word building ability as well as frequency value and
collocability of these words is great and they make up a core part of the language vocabulary.
In the 5-th century AD the Germanic tribes migrated to the British Isles and occupied most
of their territory.
The Celts, the original inhabitants of the British Isles, retreated to the North and South
West of the country (modern Scotland, Wales and Cornwall). They had little cultural contacts
with the invaders, thus the Celtic language had little impact on Old English. Few of these
borrowings remained in Modern English (dew, bald, bard, down, druid, cradle, twig, hue); a
couple of them are used in local dialects of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.
By far the greatest influence of the Celtic language upon English was upon the names of
places. This is natural, since place names are commonly adopted in great numbers from the
aboriginal inhabitants of a country. Celtic place names are therefore found in all parts of the
country in the names of rivers (Avon, Exe, Esk, Don, Usk, Severn, Thames, Trent, Ouse and Wye,
originating from the Celtic words meaning ‘river’ and ‘water’).
The Celtic aber ‘mouth’ is found in Aberdeen, Aberfeldie, Abergeldie, caer ‘castle’ in
Caercolon, Caerleon, dun ‘a protected place’ is recognized in Dunbar, Dumbarton, Dundee.
Town names include: London, Bray, Dover, Kent, Leeds, York and a lot of others, which are
common in all parts of England, though much more largely in Scotland and Ireland (Emerson
2005: 152).
In later periods a few more loan words were introduced into English through Irish Gaelic,
Scots Gaelic and Welsh – shamrock, Tory, clan, loch, slogan, budget, whisky, and crag.
Some Celtic words penetrated into English through other languages. Thus, the words beak,
budget, bulge, cloak, clock, gravel, harness, javelin, job, lawn, mineral, trousers, tunnel came
via French.
All in all, there are no more than two dozen Celtic words in English. That testifies to the
fact that English is primarily a Germanic language. (Jackson, Zé Amvela 2007: 30).

3. Latin borrowings and their chronological timeline.

Greek influence on English.

English has proved to be the most receptive among the Germanic languages to direct as well as
indirect Latin influence, largely as a consequence of the Norman Conquest.
A large part of the lexicon of Latin has entered English in two major ways: mainly religious
vocabulary from the time of Old English until the Reformation, and mainly scientific, scholarly
and legal vocabulary from the Middle Ages onwards.
The OE period of Latin borrowings is called the ‘plant’ period, since most of these terms
indicate special spheres in which the Roman invaders excelled and which they brought with
them to the British Isles. Many of them have survived into Modern English and their origin can
be easily traced, e.g. plante, plant (Lat. planta), pipper, pepper (Lat. piper), win, wine (Lat.
vinum), plum (Lat. prunum), beat (Lat. beta), buttere, butter (Lat. butyrum), cese, cheese (Lat.
caseus).
Another sphere of connection of the two languages deals with Christianization of the British
people. This time may be called the period of ‘church’ borrowings. Among them were: candel,
‘candle’, sealm ‘psalm’, munyk ‘monk’, mynster ‘monastry’, maesse ‘mass’, sealm ‘psalm’,
maegester ‘master, alter ‘altar’. During this period a number of OE words acquired a new
‘Christian’ meaning: heaven, hell, God, gospel, holy, Easter, ghost, sin.
In the Middle English period Latin words were borrowed through French – the language
which had a dominant influence on the growth of the Middle English vocabulary. Many
borrowings also occurred directly from Latin, and it is sometimes very difficult to identify the
origin and the source of the borrowing.

Sometimes the same word reached English at different times, and from different sources,
having undergone various degrees of filtering, and thus can exist in English in two or more
related forms, as with canal and channel, regard and reward, pour and pauper, catch and chase,
cave and cage, amiable and amicable.

In Early Modern English period the effect of the Renaissance began to be seriously felt in
England. We see the beginning of a huge influx of Latin and Greek words, with many of them
being learned words imported by scholars well versed in those languages. Latin continued to be
the primary language of scholarship, and most of the borrowed words belong to such fields as
religion, science, law and literature. In literature some writers used Latin words deliberately to
produce literary or elevated styles. Religious terms of this period include: collect, mediator, and
redeemer. Legal terms include: client, conviction, and subpoena. Those connected with
scholastic activities are: library, scribe, theory, metaphor and simile. Scientific words include:
equal, dissolve, essence, medicine, etc. The law, for example, has taken many terms from Latin,
such as: ad litem (‘in a lawsuit’), bona fide (‘with good faith’), ad hock (‘not planned, but
arranged or done only when necessary’), prima facie (‘at first impression’), subpoena (‘under
penalty’ – i.e. to attend court’) and some others. Medicine, on the other hand, has a tendency to
borrow words from Greek: an inflammatory disease ends in -itis (peritonitis, bronchitis), a
surgical removal ends in -ectomy (hysterectomy, vasectomy), the medical care of particular
groups -iatrics (paediatrics, geriatrics).
A number of terms were borrowed from Greek via Latin, and the influence on English
was largely lexical and conceptual with some orthographic and other effects. As it was noticed
by McArthur (Mc Arthur 1999: 453), for speakers of English Greek has been traditionally
perceived as remote, esoteric and yet worth some respect: compare the idiom It’s Greek to me (I
can’t understand it) and the saying The Greeks had a word for it (expressing a traditional view of
the richness of the language). Greek words, word-forming patterns and word elements were
adopted and adapted into Latin and passed through it into many Indo-European languages. The
significant influx was in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, e.g. rhetorical, catalogue,
analytical, dogma, psychology, stratagem, synonym, pseudonym and others.
Sometimes, a Latin or Greek adjective was adopted, but the native one kept as well, so
we can choose between motherly and maternal, earthly and terrestrial, timely and temporal.
Borrowings from classical languages continued into the Modern English period and at
that time English borrowed words and morphemes from Latin and changed them into new words
which did not exist in classical Latin. Such words are termed Neo-Latin and they were used
literally or for the purpose of expressing scientific ideas to form the basis for the majority of
modern scientific terminology. This was the period when terminology, or what we actually
mean a kind of terminological ‘lingua franca’ used as a means of international communication,
was coined. If we consider the system of linguistic terms in contrast, we can easily demonstrate
what can be described as an ‘international dimension’:
Not only words, but morphemes of classical origin were borrowed into English as well.
Moreover, such neo-classical words are used abundantly not only in international terminology,
but in other spheres of modern life.
A number of compound words were formed from roots that are taken from the classical
languages (Greek and Latin) and put together to form, for the most part, new words that were
unknown in classical Greek and Latin. They are known as neo-classical compounds, e.g.:
Anthro- (human) + -morphic (in the form of);
Biblio-(book) + -graphy (writing);
Bio- (life) + -logy (study);
Neuro-(nerve) + -algia (pain);
Tele-(distant) + -pathy (feeling);
Xeno-(foreigner) + -phobia (fear).
The adoption of a great amount of foreign words caused the emergence of hybrid words in the
English vocabulary. “Hybrids are words, whose elements come from more than one language:
television (from
Greek tele-, Latin vision), jollification (from English jolly-, Latin ification) (MacArthur 1992:
490). There are two basic types of forming hybrid words: 1) a foreign base is combined with a
native suffix, e.g.: colourless, uncertain; 2) a native base is combined with a foreign affix, e.g.
drinkable, ex-husband. There are also many hybrid compounds, such as schoolboy (Greek +
English), blackguard (English + French). Many hybrids have been considered as barbarisms,
some have not survived; others are now part of the language. Hybridization has grown steadily in
the 20th century, with such words as genocide, hypermarket, microwave, homophobe,
biodegradable, photo-shop, and megastar. It is particularly common where English is used
alongside other languages.

4. Scandinavian loanwords.

From the end of the 8-th century to the middle of the 11-th century Britain suffered
from several Danish or Viking raids, which in 878 resulted in the occupation of a great part
of the country. The linguistic effect of the Danish conquest was a contribution of a great
many Scandinavian words to the English vocabulary.
Since the varieties of Old Norse brought to England were close to English of that time,
the Scandinavian invaders did not have too many difficulties in making themselves
understood, and the contact between the invaders and the natives was intense. Given the
fact that the two languages, Old Norse and Old English, were so similar, the perception of
Old Norse words as foreign must not have been high. In many cases the forms in both
languages were similar (due to their generic relationship) and so cannot be retrospectively
distinguished. However, there are certain characteristic features of Scandinavian as
opposed to English which are reliable in identifying borrowings. The most evident one is
the consonant sound cluster [sk]. In Old English it was palatalized at an early stage; in
Scandinavian this sequence was retained in its unpalatalized form. This means that the
native English words have [sh]: ship, shin, fish, while the Scandinavian loans have [sk]:
score, scowl, scrape, scrub, sky, skirt, skill, bask, whisk.
The vowel in a word can also be an indication of the Scandinavian borrowing. Thus, the
Old English diphthongs were replaced by long vowels, but in Old Norse they remained and
this fact can explain an unexpected vocalism in some later English words such as: dairy, die,
hale, swain.
Due to the fact that the Scandinavian invaders were in close contact with the native
English population, the loan words could be found in all spheres of everyday life. All in all
there are about 2000 Scandinavian loanwords in English, which can be grouped into word
classes :
1) Nouns: anger, bag, booth, bulwark, cake, cart, club, crook, dirt, egg, fellow, fir, fog,
gate, gun, gap, guess, harbour, husband, kid, leg link, race, lump, rug, reef, scales,
skin, slang, snob, window, wind.
2) Verbs: blend, call, cast, clip, crave, crawl, cut, dash, die, droop, gape, grasp, give,
glitter, happen, hit, hurry, jump, kick, lift, leak, nag, raise, rid scare, sniff, struggle,
stumble, take, wag, want, welcome.
3) Adjectives: awkward, big, cozy, flat, happy, nasty, odd, shy, sly, tight, tipsy, ugly,
wrong, weak.
4) Pronouns: they, them, their, same, both.
Sometimes Scandinavian loans involve a little more than the substitution of one word
for another, but some borrowings that expressed new concepts (such as certain
Scandinavian legal terms) or new things (for various kinds of Viking warship) (Jackson, Zé
Amvela: 43). A large number of duplicate words also arose from this contact. In some
cases the OE word was retained, in others it was an ON (i.e. Old Norse) borrowing, as egg
vs. OE ey, sister vs. OE sweoster, etc. In a number of cases both words survived, but while
OE words are standard, their ON equivalents are dialectal: yard vs. garth, church vs. kirk,
leap vs. laup, lum vs. chimney, neep vs turnip, vennel vs alley, true vs. trigg. All these dialect
forms belong to Scotland or the North of England.
Doublets are similar in their phonetic form as can be recognized from the examples above.
However in many cases there are loans which have developed a certain difference in meaning:

OE ON

Whole hale
Shriek screak
Ditch dike
Rise raise
Craft skill
Shirt skirt
Ill sick
 The extent of Scandinavian influence on English can be determined by looking at the place
names of Scandinavian origin on the British Isles. There are a great many places with the suffix -
by (meaning ‘village’): Fleckeby, Appleby, Derby, Ashby, Schysby; the suffix -toft (meaning ‘a
piece of ground or homestead’): Eastoft, Nortoft, Brimtoft; the suffix -thwaite (meaning ‘an
isolated piece of land or clearing’) as in Applethwaite, Braithwaite, Satterthwaite.
Though borrowings from Scandinavian are not numerous, they are part and parcel of the
English vocabulary. There is much truth in Otto Jespersen’s words: “…Scandinavian loan-words
are homely expressions for things and actions of everyday importance; their character is utterly
democratic. Just as it is impossible to speak or write in English about higher intellectual or
emotional subjects or about fashionable mundane matters without drawing largely upon the
French (and Latin) elements, in the same manner Scandinavian words will crop up together with
the Anglo-Saxon ones in any conversation on the thousand nothings of daily life or on the five or
six things of paramount importance to high and low alike. An Englishman cannot thrive or be ill,
or die without Scandinavian words; they are to the language what bread and eggs are to the daily
fare (Jespersen 1912: 80).
It should be mentioned that English continued borrowing from Scandinavian in later periods;
among the recent borrowings are the following: rug, ski, rune, saga, tungsten, easel and
ombudsman.

5. French contribution to English. Characteristics of

French loanwords in different periods

The Norman Conquest of 1066 had an enormous effect on language development. The
language, spoken by the Normans, known as Norman French became the language of the King’s
court, the government and the new upper social classes. Norman French was therefore the
language of honour, chivalry and justice. Such a context was favourable for the development of
French-English bilingualism: many Normans learned English in their everyday contacts, while
Englishmen learned French to gain advantage from the aristocracy. Indeed, Matthew of
Westminster said, ‘Whoever was unable to speak French was considered a vile and contemptible
person by the common people’ (1263).
There were three periods of French borrowings. The first, from about 1066 to 1250 represents
the height of the Norman power. French was the language of the aristocracy and therefore also
the language of prestige, government and polite social intercourse. English was the language of
the common folk and menials. There were not many French borrowings at that time, since
English was used largely in its own, low-level arenas, and French and English speakers were
kept separate.
The second period, roughly from 1250 to 1400, represents the period of the abundant influx
of Norman French borrowings. According to D. Crystal (Crystal 1995: 46) by the end of the
thirteenth century, about 10,000 French words were borrowed into English, and about 75% of
these words are still in use. These words were quickly assimilated into English; i.e., English
suffixes, etc., were freely added to the borrowed French words; e.g., gentle, borrowed in 1225, is
found compounded with an English word, gentlewoman, in 1230 (Baugh and Cable 1993: 444).
French loanwords of that period could be found in all domains, namely those relating to:
1) Law and administration: accuse, advocate, arrest, attorney, constable, court, crime, deny,
goal, jail, judge, justice, prison, punish, verdict.
2) Military affairs: admiral, arms, battle, camp, chivalry, combat, command, defence, destroy,
enemy, navy, penalty, soldier, surrender, traitor, troops.
3) Political life: empire, government, policy, parliament, minister, state, sovereign, crown,
power, administration, office, counsel, mayor, agreement, treaty, reign, civil.
 4) Titles and professions: baron, duke, duchess, prince, emperor, count, viscount, butcher,
painter, tailor, barber, carpenter, draper, forester, grocer, merchant, apprentice,
surgeon, physician.
4) Religion: abbot, clergy, preach, sacrament, service, tempt, saint, charity, faith,
commandment, baptize, parish, divine, chapel.
5) Cuisine: biscuits, boil, dinner, fry, pastry, pork, roast, soup, stew, spice, sausage, veal,
jelly, salad, juice, sauce.
6) Names of plants: cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, onion, radish, cucumber.
7) Names of precious stones: amethyst, diamond, emerald, pearl, ruby, sapphire, topaz,
turquoise.
8) Fashion: luxury, coat, collar, lace, pleat, embroidery, frock, garment, gown, robe, cotton,
fur, button, fashion.
9) Terms for emotional states: ease, disease, joy, delight, felicity, grief, despair, distress,
courage, passion, desire, jealousy, ambition, arrogance, despite, disdain, malice,
envy, certainty, doubt, enjoy, despise, furious.
10) Geography: country, coast, river, valley, lake, mountain, frontier, border, city,
hamlet, village, estate.
The third period of French borrowings is from around 1400 onwards. Its feature is that,
unlike the loanwords of the first two periods, which expressed the core notions and became
quite nativised (it takes some effort to imagine that the words like arm, car, case, change,
clear, dance, fine, line, finish used to be aliens in English). The later borrowings from French
were more distant from the core, being more refined and sophisticated, with their evident
‘French flavor’. Notice the spelling and pronunciation of some of these words: ballet, tableau,
statuesque, cliché, coup d’état, motif, format, trousseau, lingerie, rouge, avant-garde, vis-á-vis,
etiquette.
Words that were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly through French
literature, are not so numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated. These
borrowings fall into the four broad categories:
1) Words relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatoire, brochure, nuance,
pirouette, vaudeville;
2) Words relating to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau;
3) Words relating to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manoeuvre.
4) Words relating to food and cooking: ragout, sauté, hors d’oeuvre, cuisine;
French borrowings which came into English after 1650 retained their spelling, e.g. the
consonants p, t, s are not pronounced at the end of the word (buffet, coup, debris). The typical
French word combination of letters ‘eau’ can be found in the borrowings: bureau, gateau, art
nouveau. Some of the diagraphs retain their French pronunciation: ch is pronounced as [k], e.g.
chic, chef, parachute; qu is pronounced as [k], e. g. bouquet, quartet; ou is pronounced as [u], e.
g. coupe, boutique, soup.
It is evident, that this heavy borrowing from French had several effects on English. Firstly,
native English words were replaced by the borrowed ones. Secondly, native and loanwords were
retained with a differentiation in meaning (swine – pork, house – mansion, calf – veal, sheep –
mutton, hearty – cordial).
Etymological twins (the borrowings from different languages which are historically
descended from the same root) emerged. E. g.: senior (Latin), sir (French); captain (Latin),
chieftain (French); canal (Latin), channel (French); secure (Latin), sure (French). Some of them
originated from the same language, but where borrowed at different periods. E. g.: cavalry
(Norm. French), chivalry (Par. French); travel (Norm. French), travail (Par. French); chief
(Norm. French), chef (Par. French). Etymological twins may also be known as doublets, and may
occur as triplets or more, as in: hospital (Latin), hostel (Norm. French), hotel (Par. French); right
(Germanic), rich (Celtic), regalia (Latin), reign (Norm. French), royal (Par. French), real
(Portuguese).
 Finally, as a result of Middle English borrowing from French and Latin, Modern English
abounds in synonyms of three levels: informal (English), literary (French) and formal (Latin),
as in:

English French Latin

ask question interrogate
rise mount ascend
fire flame conflagration
holy sacred consecrated
end finish terminate
hatred enmity animosity
kingly royal regal

In general, as the examples cited confirm, the synonym from the Latinate strata tends to
be used in more formal context, than the one from the Anglo-Saxon stratum.
French influenced not only the vocabulary of English but also its spelling, since the
manuscripts were written by French scribers as the local population was mainly illiterate, and
the ruling class was French. Runic letters, remaining in English after the Latin alphabet was
borrowed, were substituted by Latin letters and combinations of letters, e. g.: the letter ‘v’ was
introduced for the voiced consonant [v] instead of ‘f’ in the intervocalic position (lufian – love),
the diagraph ‘ch’ was introduced to denote the sound [t∫] (chest) before the front vowels where it
had been palatalized, the diagraph ‘sh’ was introduced instead of the combination ’sc’ to denote
the sound [∫] (ship) etc. As it was difficult for French scribers to copy English texts they
substituted the letter ‘u’ before ‘v’, ‘m’, ‘n’ for the letter ‘o’ to escape the combination of many
vertical lines: sunu-son, luvu-love.

6. Borrowings from other sources: Italian, Dutch,

Spanish, Arabic, Slavic and others.

German and Dutch loans

From the Middle Ages on, various kinds of contacts have existed between the Dutch and the
British. In these contacts English borrowed from Dutch a lot of nautical terms, as the Dutch
were eminent in this field. Among these are: bowline, bowsprit, buoy, commodore, cruise, deck,
keel, leak, reef, skipper, smuggle, yacht. The Dutch and Flemish were also famous for their cloth
making and associated commercial activities. Together with cloth they exported the words
dealing with this domain: cambric, duck, jacket, nap, spool. Other commercial terms include:
dollar, groat, guilder, and mart.
Loanwords also came into English through contacts between American and Dutch settlers,
who lived close to each other sharing the territory and the languages. The diversity of contacts
accounts for the wide range of loanwords: boodle, boss, cookie, cranberry, dope, lowery, Santa
Clause (Sante Klaas, Saint Nicholas), spook, waffle.
Another region of contacts was in South Africa, where South African Dutch (Afrikaans)
was spoken. From this language English has borrowed a few lexical items, among them are:
apartheid, commandeer, commando, outspan, spoor, trek, veld.
The contacts between English and High German were not so beneficial. Words have been
borrowed in specialist fields, such as geology and mineralogy: cobalt, feldspar, gneiss, nickel,
quarts, seltzer, zinc. Some food and drink terms include: delicatessen, frankfurter, noodle,
schnapps. German borrowings can be easily identified in English by their phonetic form, e.g.:
blitz, ersatz, Gestalt, hinterland, leitmotiv, rucksack, umlaut, waltz, Weltanschauung. They also
preserve morphological and graphical features of the original language and are non-assimilated.
 3.7. Spanish, Portuguese and Italian borrowings in English

Apart from Latin and French, English has borrowed from other Romance languages, such
as Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Many Spanish words have come into English from three
primary sources: many of them entered American English in the days of Mexican and Spanish
cowboys working in what is now the U.S. Southwest. Words of Caribbean origin entered English
by way of trade. The third major source is the names of foods which had no English equivalent
as the intermingling of cultures has expanded Spanish diet as well as Spanish vocabulary. Many
of the words changed their meaning upon entering English, often by adopting a narrower
meaning than in the original language.
Spanish and Portuguese borrowings could be arranged into the following groups:
1) Food and cookery terms: apricot, avocado, banana (the word, originally of African origin,
entered English vie either Spanish or Portuguese), barbecue (from barbacoa, a word of
Caribbean origin), tomato, vanilla.
2) Military and political terms: armada, conquistador, comrade, embargo, guerilla, junta.
3) Nature phenomena: El Niňo, hurricane, savanna, tornado.
4) Trade and business terms: cargo, embargo, bonanza, El Dorado
5) Names of dances and musical instruments: tango, rumba, habanera, guitar.
A good mixture of English and Spanish can be observed in Spanglish (a blend of English
+ Spanish) – a variety of English heavily influenced by Spanish, commonly spoken in US
Hispanic communities and the British communities in Argentina. For example, a fluent bilingual
speaker addressing another, like bilingual speaker, might indulge in code switching (a linguistic
term denoting the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety in
conversation) with some words, changing them into English, as in the sentence: ‘I’m afraid I
can’t report at the meeting next week porque tengo una obligación de negocious en Chicago,
pero espero que I’ll do it a week after’.
The influence of Italian on English is mostly lexical and has continued over many
centuries. Since medieval times, Italian has had a strong influence on French, as a result of which
many borrowings into English have had a distinctly Gallic aspect, as with battalion (16 c: from
battalion, from battaglione), caprice (17 c: from caprice, from capriccio, the skip of a goat, a
sudden sharp movement), frigate (16 c: from frigate, from fregata), picturesque (17 c: from
pittoresque, from pittoresco, with assimilation to picture). Direct borrowings fall into four broad
categories:
1) Terms from the old pan-European tradition of using Italian to discuss and describe music: e.g.:
adagio, alto, andante, basso, bel canto, cello, coloratura, concerto, contralto, crescendo,
diminuendo, divertimento, duet, fortissimo, libretto, pianoforte, pizzicato, scherzo, solo, sonata,
violine.
2) Comparable literary, architectural, artistic, and cultural terms, such as canto, conversazione,
cupola, extravaganza, fresco, novella, palazzo, stanza, tarantella.
3) Internationalized culinary terms, such as lasagne, minestrone, mozzarella, pasta, pizza,
ravioli, spaghetti, vermicelli.
4) A variety of social words, including alfresco, bimbo, bravo, confetti, dilettante, fascist,
fiasco, gazette, ghetto, gigolo, graffiti, incognito, mafia, regatta.
Some loans have adapted the spelling, such as macaroni (from Italian maccherony). In
addition, some words have moved to a greater or less extent from their original area of
application to a wider use, as with crescendo, piano, solo.

3.8. Words of Slavic Origin in the English Language

Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of
the Slavic peoples, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of
central Europe, and in northern part of Asia. Scholars traditionally divide them into three main
brunches:
1) East Slavic, which further subdivides into: Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian.
2) West Slavic, including: Czech and Slovak, Upper and Lower Sorbian (minority languages in
Germany), and Polish.
3) South Slavic, which further subdivides into:
a) Western subgroup composed of Slovene and Serbo-Croatian;
b) Eastern subgroup composed of Bulgarian, and Macedonian (See Wikipedia).
Most scholars agree that despite a comparable extent of historical proximity, the Germanic
languages demonstrate less significant Slavic influence, partly because Slavic migration mostly
headed south rather than west and partly due to political reasons, when there was a tendency to
diminish Slavic contribution to Germanic languages.
The Slavic nations have also made a contribution through the millions of immigrants to the
English speaking nations from that part of Europe. That is why Canadian English is featured by a
number of borrowings from Ukrainian, e. g.: babka, bandura, borshch, chernozem, cossak,
hetman, holubtsi, hopak, pysanka. American English shows more significant Slavic influence
due to Yiddish. The term ‘Ameridish’ is used to describe new words, or new meanings of
existing Yiddish words, created by English-speaking persons with some knowledge of Yiddish.
Some of these words have the Slavic diminutive suffix –chik(-ik)(-ic): e.g.: boychick – boy,
young man; nudnik – a pest, ‘pain in the neck’, a bore (from Ukrainian or Polish ‘nudne’);
alrightnik – a male or female individual who has been successful, nouveau riche; bulbenik – an
actor, who muffs his lines (from bilbul – mixup (alternative theory- bulba (Ukrainian)– potato).
Some words in the process of borrowing can undergo some semantic transformations, as
the Russian word babushka (an old woman), which has restricted its meaning to - ‘a headscarf
tied under the chin, worn by Russian peasant women’. The original meaning of this word - ‘an
old woman or grandmother’ is preserved in the recent coinage babushkaphobia – ‘dislike of or
aversion of grandchildren, fear of grandmothers’.
Having analyzed the lexical transfer between English and Slavic languages, Danko Ŝipka
has made the following conclusions: 1) Lexical and cultural influence from subordinate to
dominant language is by and large limited by the culture-bound items. Borrowed vocabulary
items remain marginal in the overall English vocabulary. Several exceptions from this trend, i.e.
words which have made it to the core of the English vocabulary as a result of the butterfly effect
and can not be accounted for by some general trend. 2) Lexical influence of each particular
language is directly proportionate to the language size. Exceptions from this general trend occur,
as demonstrated by East Slavic languages, when one language clearly dominates others. 3) The
timeline of borrowing is directly proportionate with the growth and deepening of the
international communication networks of the twentieth century (Ŝipka 2004: 353-365). If
we examine the total English vocabulary closely, we see that a great proportion of it consists of
words of ultimately foreign origin. Yet, according to Algeo (Algeo 1991: 4): “Many such words
were actually formed in English, so the extremely high percentage of borrowing sometimes
reported for English is exaggerated”. He traditionally divides borrowings into three types:
simple loans, adapted loans and loan translations.
Simple loans are words adopted directly into English, sometimes with minor changes in
pronunciation to make them conform to English sound norms and patterns. Occasionally,
spelling changes of a similar kind are also required but with no major change of form. E.g. artel,
troika, perestroika, glasnost, pryzhok (from Russian), dumka (from either Czech or Ukrainian),
and polka (from Polish).
Adapted loans, on the other hand, involve some morphological change (change of form),
rather than slight modifications of phonology and orthography. In other words, they are adapted
from their foreign word pattern into a more native (English) one. For example, a foreign ending
may be omitted and replaced with a native suffix: E. g.: constructivism (from the Russian
konstructivizm, folkloristics (from the Russian folkloristika) and akathisia (from Czech
akathiste).
Loan translations or calques differ from the above borrowings in that they are not foreign
in their form but in the meaning they convey, i. e. instead of borrowing the form of a foreign
word, English sometimes borrows its meaning, rendering the foreign sense by suitable words in
the form of literary translation already part of the English vocabulary. E.g. wall newspaper
(transl. from Russian stengazeta), godless (transl. from Russian bezbozhnik), biogeochemistry
(transl. from Russian biogeokhimia), superplasticity (transl. from Russian sverkhplastichnost),
foregrounding (transl. from Czech aktualisace).Often calques exist alongside the corresponding
simple loans they translate: bachelors and the Russian holostiaky, saturdaying and the Russian
subbotnic, plum pox and the Bulgarian starka.

3.8.1. Borrowings from Ukrainian

English words of Ukrainian origin are words in the English language which were borrowed
or derived from the Ukrainian language.
Some of them may have entered via Russian, Polish, Yiddish or some other languages. They
may have originated in other languages, but are used to describe notions related to Ukraine.
Some are regionalisms, used in English-speaking places with a significant Ukrainian diaspora
population, especially in Canada, but a number of them have entered the general English
vocabulary. E.g.:
bandura – a stringed instrument,
borscht – (Ukr. borshch) beet soup, also the expression – cheap like borscht,
cossack – (Ukr. kozak), a freedom-loving horseman of the steppes,
gley (Ukr. hley), a sticky blue-grey waterlogged soil type, poor in oxygen,
hetman – a Cossack military leader,
holubtsi – plural – (Ukr. singular holubets) – cabbage rolls,
hopack – a lively traditional dance,
pysanka – a decorated Easter egg,
steppe – a flat, treeless plain,
varenyky - boiled dumplings with potato or curdled cheese.

3.8.2. Borrowings from other languages in English

Being very flexible, English continues to enhance its vocabulary by taking in loanwords from
around the world. Some recent borrowings include: ciabatta (a type of open-textured bread made
of olive oil (Italian)), gite (a self-catering holiday cottage for let in France (French)), intifada
(the Palestinian uprising against Israel (Arabic)), juggernaut (a very large lorry for transporting
goods by road (Hindi), karaoke (an entertainment in which people take it in turns to sing well-
known songs over a pre-recorded baking tape (Japanese), nouvelle cuisine ( a style of preparing
or presenting food, with light sauces and unusual combinations of flavours and garnishes
(French)), ombudsman (a commissioner who acts as independent referee between individual
citizens and their government or its administration (Swedish), paparazzi (a freelance
photographer who specializes in candid camera shots of famous people and often invades their
privacy to obtain such photographs (Italian), perestroika (the policy of reconstructing the
economy, etc., of the former Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachov (Russian),
salsa a) a type of Latin American big-band dance music, b) Mexican source (Spanish), tikka (of
meat, esp. chicken or lamb) marinated in spices then dry-roasted, usually in a clay oven
(Punjubi).

7. Levels of assimilation.

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) the language
group the word was borrowed from (the assimilation is easier if the word belongs to the same or
closely related groups of languages); b) oral or written way of borrowing (words borrowed orally
are assimilated quicker); c) how often the word is used in the language (the greater the frequency
of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated); d) how long the word lives in the language (the longer
it lives, the more assimilated it is).
Accordingly, borrowings fall into the following groups: a) completely assimilated; b)
partly assimilated; c) non-assimilated (barbarisms).
Completely assimilated loanwords are those that are not felt as foreign words in the
language, they are found in all the layers of older borrowings.
They may belong to the first layer of Latin borrowings, e, g: cheese, street, wall, or wine.
Among Scandinavian borrowed words we find such frequently used nouns as husband, fellow,
gate, root, wing; such verbs as call, die, take, want and adjectives like happy, ill, low, odd and
wrong. Completely assimilated French words are extremely numerous and frequent. Nowadays it
takes some effort to imagine that such everyday words as table, chair, face, figure, finish, matter
are aliens to the language.
The second group containing partially assimilated borrowed words can be subdivided into
subgroups:
a) Loan words that are not assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and
notions peculiar to the country from which they come. They may denote foreign clothing:
mantilla, sombrero; foreign titles and professions: shah, rajah, sheik, bei, toreador; foreign
vehicles: caique (Turkish), rickshaw (Chinese), food and drinks: pillow (Persian) sherbet
(Arabian); foreign currency: hryvnia (Ukraine), rupee (India), zloty (Poland), peseta (Spain).
b) Borrowed words that are not assimilated grammatically, for example, nouns
borrowed from Latin Greek which keep their original plural forms: bacillus - bacilli, crisis -
crises, formula - formulae, stratum – strata, index; indices. Some of these can also take typically
English plural forms, but in that case there may be a difference in lexical meaning as in: indices:
indexes, mice: mouses.
c) Borrowed words that are not completely assimilated phonetically. The French words
borrowed after 1650 afford good examples. Some of them keep the accent on the final
syllable: mach'ine, car'toon, re'gime.
This group is fairly large and variegated. There are, for instance, words borrowed from
French in which the final consonant is not pronounced, e.g: ballet, buffet, corps. Some may
keep a diacritic mark: café, cliché, fiancé. Specifically French digraphs (ch, qu, ou) may be
retained in spelling: bouquet, brioche, chef, nouveau riche.
It goes without saying that these sets are intersecting, i.e. one and the same loan word
often shows incomplete assimilation in several respects simultaneously.
The third group of borrowings comprises the so-called barbarisms, i. e. words from
other languages used by English people in conversation or in writing, but not assimilated in any
way, and for which there are corresponding English equivalents. The examples are the Italian
addio, ciao - goodbye, the French affich - for placard and coup or coup d’ Etat – ‘a sudden
seizure of state power by a small group, the Latin ad libitum – at pleasure and the like.
These words are on the outskirts of the literary language, but they are used for certain
stylistic purposes. Many of them have their synonyms in the literary language, e.g. chic –
stylish, bon mot – a clever witty saying, ad hoc – for this particular purpose, impromptu –
improvised, without preparation, unplanned.

8. Etymological doublets (triplets). How did they arise?

Sometimes a word is borrowed twice from the same language. As the result, we
have two different words with different spellings and meanings but historically
they come back to one and the same word. They differ to a certain degree in form,
meaning and current usage.
Etymological twins are usually a result of chronologically separate borrowing from
a source language. In the case of English, this usually means once from French
during the Norman invasion, and again later, after the word had evolved.

e.g. warranty (гарантия) and guarantee.

In English there are some groups of them:

Latino-French doublets.

Latin English from Latin English from French

 uncia inch ounce

 moneta mint money
 camera camera chamber

Franco-French doublets

doublets borrowed from different dialects of French.

Norman Paris

 canal channel
 captain chieftain
 catch chaise

Scandinavian-English doublets

Scandinavian English

 skirt shirt
 scabby shabby

There are also etymological doublets which were borrowed from the same
language during different historical periods, such as French doublets: gentil -
любезный, благородный, etymological doublets are: gentle - мягкий, вежливый
and genteel - благородный. From the French word gallant etymological doublets
are : ‘gallant - храбрый and ga’llant - галантный, внимательный.

+Sometimes etymological doublets are the result of borrowing different

grammatical forms of the same word, e.g. the Comparative degree of Latin «super»
was «superior» which was borrowed into English with the meaning «high in some
quality or rank». The Superlative degree (Latin «supremus») in English «supreme»
with the meaning «outstanding», «prominent». So «superior» and «supreme» are
etymological doublets
triplets - sets of three items, all expressing the same notion but differing slightly in
meaning or style, e.g. hotel, hostel and hospital; strait, straight, and strict; kingly,
royal, regal and others.

II. Do the tasks and answer the following questions below:

1. Identify the origins of the following words:

Window, lingerie, euphemism, kiosk, peace, guitar, shamrock, candle, tycoon,

zebra, to eat,
alphabet,- came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum,
which in turn originated in the Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphabētos).
embargo, from Spanish embargo "seizure, arrest; embargo," noun of action from
embargar "restrain, impede, arrest, embargo," from Vulgar Latin *imbarricare,
from assimilated form of in- "into, upon
babushka, - originates from Russian ба́бушка
passion, -from Old French passion "Christ's passion, physical suffering" (10c.),
from Late Latin passionem
kiszka,-originates from Proto-Slavic *kyšьka.
waltz, - rom German Walzer, from walzen ‘revolve’
junta- It's from the Spanish junta, for a military or political group ruling the
country after it has been taken over.
, cello,- is derived from the ending of the Italian violoncello, which means "little
violone"
psychiatry,- from Greek psukhē ‘soul, mind’ + iatreia ‘healing’
to give,- From Middle English given, from Old Norse gefa (“to give”), from
Proto-Germanic *gebaną (“to give”).
veldt, - , from older Dutch veld "field," from Proto-Germanic *felthuz "flat land"
(see field (n.)).
to take, - from a Scandinavian source (such as Old Norse taka "take, grasp, lay
hold," past tense tok, past participle tekinn; Swedish ta, past participle tagit)
they,- from Old Norse their, nominative plural masculine of sá ; related to them
and their, also to that and the.
happy,- Middle English (in the sense ‘lucky’)
raison d’être,- French, literally ‘reason for being’.
graffiti,- from Italian (plural), from graffio ‘a scratch’.
bottom,- Old English botm, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch bodem ‘bottom,
ground’ and German Boden ‘ground, earth’.
kasha,- From Russian ка́ша
shtick,- rom the Yiddish shtik (‫)שטיק‬, in turn derived from German Stück and
Polish sztuka (both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *stukkiją), all meaning
"piece", "thing" or "theatre play"; note that "Theaterstück" is the German word for
play (theatre)
sacrifice,- from Old French, from Latin sacrificium ; related to sacrificus
‘sacrificial’, from sacer ‘holy’.
 fellow,- from Old Norse félagi, from fé ‘cattle, property, money’ + the Germanic
base of lay
ginger,- from Old English gingifer, from Medieval Latin gingiber, from Greek
zingiberis,
wrong,- from Old Norse rangr ‘awry, unjust’; related to wring.
waffle,- It is directly derived from the Dutch wafel, which itself derives from the
Middle Dutch wafele.
saga, - from Old Norse, literally ‘narrative’; related to saw
troika, - Russian, from troe ‘set of three’
gala, - from Old French gale ‘rejoicing’
dollar- , from Low German daler

2. Identify the source of the non-assimilated borrowings below and interpret

them.

1) The way the president got his bill through the Senate was a tour de force-
exploit. F
2) He lectured me as a student in Delhi School of Economics and was a
researcher par excellence-awesome. F
3) Commerce was the town’s raison d’être-raison for being.F
4) Schadenfreude- Gloating –ЗЛОРтство is an ugly, base emotion and one
we’d all be better off eschewing whenever possible. G
5) He came to power in a violent and bloody coup d'état- blow of state" led by
the Army. F
6) Tuxedos were de rigueur - befitting доречні at the event. F
7) She was given carte blanche- complete freedom повна свобода to organize
things as she saw fit. F
8) His critics suggested he had binge-watched too many episodes of Downton
Abbey, a happy historical fantasy where lords and ladies stroll across
silently tended lawns, and noblesse oblige- nobility obligates defines the
moral order. Ф
9) Venturi is the former enfant terrible- bohemian of architecture. F
10) She shouldn’t have engaged in the personal attack on the council for
the prosecution, but her ad hominem -against the person - is believed to have
won the case. L
11) He struggled at first, but persevered and graduated magna cum laude-
with great praise- з великою похвалою. L
12) The police are going after Tarantino, even though he’s a white man,
because they know he’s a perfect piñata-action figure for the Fox News crowd.
S
3. Identify the missing synonym in the triplet sets below:

English French Latin

Ask …question interrogate
Rise mount ascend
…Fire flame conflagration
 Holy sacred consecrated
End finish … terminate
Hatred enmity… animosity
kingly… royal regal
age… age era
Goodness virtue bonitatem…
4. Suggest adjectives of Latin origin that correspond to the following
nouns (e.g. mother – maternal):

Lip;-labial

Tooth- toothlike

; mind-minded, mindful

; memory; -memorial

sight; -optical

eye;- optical, visual

moon-lunar

; sun;- brilliant

island. –islandly ---

5. Form adjectives from the nouns below and then suggest a Latin
synonym for each adjective (e.g. mother – motherly – maternal):

Father;- fatherly- paternal

child;- сhildly, childish, and childlike.- puerilis

woman;- womanly · feminine

daughter; - daughterly- filialis

earth;- earthly,- Terrestrial,

heaven;- heavenless, heavenly- celestical

night;- nightly- nocturnal

time; - timeless- eternal,

 heart; - hearty- calidus

life; -live, lively- alacer

truth,-true, truthy- Veritas Aequitas

war.- warring, warlike- discors

Are the adjectives interchangeable? Explain the semantic differences between them.

Yes, these adjectives are interchangeable because these are two or more adjectives
which that describe the same noun equally.

6. Identify etymological doublets (triplets) for hospital, sir, cavalry, chief,

travel, captain, canal, and use them in the sentences below:

 The provinces are based upon the ancient tribal homelands whose people were
ruled by their own ……senior……..
 Let us be clear about the causes of our present economic …travail…. and
where the blame lies.
 Most remarkable was the language used by some …chef… members of the
judiciary.
 He spent the night in a …hospital, ….. for migrant workers.
 These pipes will …channel…. water to the settlement.
 To the knighthood, or …chivalry….., of the Middle Ages war had long given
a sense of purpose.
 How many times have I nearly wept at the destruction of delicate little
scallops at the hands of ignorant or insensitive chieftan…..?

Hospital- (i. e. groups of three words of common root) occur rarer, but here are at
least two examples: hospital (Lat.) — hostel (Norm. Fr.) — hotel (Par. Fr.)

Sir - senior (Lat.)

Cavalry- (Norm. Fr.) — chivalry (Par. Fr.

Chief-chef

Travel- Norm. Fr.) — travail (Par. Fr.),

Captain - chieftan (Fr.).

Canal- channel (Fr.)