245
in science and technology and with considerable borrowings from more than 300
other languages. Names of many basic concepts and things come from Old English or
Anglo-
Saxon: heaven and earth, love and hate, life and death, beginning and end, day and ni
ght, month and year, heat and cold, way and path, meadow and stream.
Cardinal
numerals come
from Old English, as do all the ordinal numerals except second (Old
English other,
which
still
retains
its older meaning in “every other
day”). Second comes from Latin secundus “following,” through French second,
related to Latin sequi “to follow,” as in English sequence. From Old English come all
the personal pronouns (except they, their, and them, which are from Scandinavian),
the auxiliary verbs (except the marginal used, which is from French), most simple
prepositions, and all conjunctions.
Numerous nouns would be identical whether
they came from Old English
or Scandinavian: father, mother, brother (but not sister); man, wife; ground, land,
tree, grass; summer, winter; cliff, dale. Many verbs would also be identical,
especially monosyllabic verbs—bring, come, get, hear, meet, see, set, sit, spin, stand,
think.
The
same
is
true
of
the
adjectives full and wise;
the
colour
names gray (grey), green, and white;
the
possessives mine and thine (but
not ours and yours); the terms north and west (but not south and east); and the
prepositions over and under. Just a few English and Scandinavian doublets coexist in
current speech: no and nay, yea and ay, from and fro, rear (i.e., “to bring up”)
and raise, shirt and skirt (both related to the adjective short), less and loose. From
Scandinavian, law was borrowed early, whence bylaw,
meaning village law,
and outlaw,
meaning “man outside the law.” Husband (hus-bondi) meant
“householder,” whether single or married, whereas fellow (fe-lagi) meant one who
“lays fee” or shares property with another, and so “partner, shareholder.” From
Scandinavian come the common nouns axle (tree), band, birth, bloom, crook, dirt,
egg, gait, gap, girth, knife, loan, race, rift, root, score, seat, skill, sky, snare,
thrift, and window; the adjectives awkward, flat, happy, ill, loose, rotten, rugged, sly,
tight, ugly, weak, and wrong; and many verbs, including call, cast, clasp, clip, crave,
die, droop, drown, flit, gape, gasp, glitter, life, rake, rid, scare, scowl, skulk, snub,
sprint, thrive, thrust, and want.
Knowledge of the pre-Wycliffe English renditions stems from the many actual
manuscripts that have survived.
The debt of the English language to French is large.
The terms president,
representative, legislature, congress, constitution, and parliament are all French. So,
too, are duke, marquis, viscount, and baron;
but king, queen, lord, lady,
earl, and knight are English. City, village, court, palace, manor, mansion,
residence, and domicile are French; but town, borough, hall, house, bower,
room, and home are English. Comparison between the many pairs of English and
French synonyms shows that the former are more human and concrete, the latter
more intellectual and
abstract;
e.g.,
the
terms freedom and liberty, friendship and amity, hatred and enmity, love and affectio
246
n, likelihood and probability, truth and veracity, lying and mendacity. The superiority
of French cooking is duly recognized by the adoption of such culinary terms as boil,
broil, fry, grill, roast, souse, and toast. Breakfast is English, but dinner and supper are
French. Hunt is English, but chase, quarry, scent, and track are French. Craftsmen
bear names of English origin: baker, builder, fisher (man), hedger, miller, shepherd,
shoemaker, wainwright, and weaver, or webber.
Names of skilled artisans, however,
are
French: carpenter,
draper,
haberdasher,
joiner,
mason,
painter,
plumber, and tailor. Many terms relating to dress and fashion, cuisine and viniculture,
politics and diplomacy, drama and literature, art and ballet come from French.
In the spheres of science and technology many terms come from Classical
Greek through French or directly from Greek. Pioneers in research and
development now regard Greek as a kind of inexhaustible quarry from which they
can draw linguistic material at will. By prefixing the Greek adverb tēle “far away,
distant” to the existing compound photography, “light writing,”
they create the
precise (though today rarely used) term telephotography to denote the photographing
of distant objects by means of a special lens, known as a telephoto lens. By inserting
the prefix micro- “small” into this same compound, they make the new
term photomicrography, denoting
the
electronic
photographing
of bacteria and viruses. Such neo-Hellenic derivatives would probably have been
unintelligible
to Plato and Aristotle.
Many
Greek compounds and
derivatives
have Latin equivalents with slight or considerable differentiations in meaning.
Equivalent compounds and derivatives nouns from the Greek nouns from the
Latin. The italicized suffixes -
al, -escent, and -ous, attached to some of the Greek
adjectives, are of Latin origin.dys-troph-ymal-nutr-it-ionhypo-sta-sissub-stan-
cehypo-the-sissup-pos-it-ionmeta-morph-o-sistrans-form-at-ionmeta-phortrans-
fermeta-the-sistrans-pos-it-ionperi-pher-ycircum-fer-en-ceperi-phra-siscircum-loc-
ut-ionsym-path-ycom-pass-ionsyn-drom-econ-curr-en-cesyn-op-siscon-spect-ussyn-
the-siscom-pos-it-ionsy-zyg-ycon-junc-t-ion adjectives from the Greek adjectives
from
the
Latindia-phan-oustrans-par-enthyper-aesth-et-icsuper-sens-it-ivehyper-
phys-ic-alsuper-nat-ur-alhypo-derm-icsub-cut-an-eoushypo-ge-alsub-terr-an-
eanmelan-chol-icatra-bil-iousmono-morph-icuni-formoxy-phyll-ousacut-i-fol-i-
ateperi-pat-et-iccircum-amb-ul-at-oryphos-phor-escentlumin-i-fer-ouspoly-glott-
almulti-lingu-alsphen-oidcunei-formsyn-chron-iccon-temp-or-ary
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