Early Modern English (1500-1700) through texts

Chapter 6. Early Modern English: 1500-1700

Much like the Cely letters, the collection of letters written to and by Lord Lisle, his family, friends, and
staff, provide valuable linguistic information. Lord Lisle was Governor of Calais for Henry VIII from 1533 to
1540. The French town was at that time an English possession. The first text below is by the 14-year old
George Bassett, Lady Lisle’s son by her first marriage who was being educated in the household of Sir
Francis Bryan. The letter of 1539 is purely formal: the boy has nothing to say and he says it in the approved
Tudor manner.
George Bassett to his parents Lord and Lady Lisle, 1 July 1539

Ryht honorable and my most dere and singler goode lorde
and ladye / in my most humble man[ner] I recõmaunde me unto yow
besechynge to have yor dailye blessynge / and to here of yor goode
and prospus helth / fore the conservatione of which / I praye
dailye unto almyghty godde. I certifye youe by theys my
rude l[ett]res that my Maister and my Ladye be in goode helthe /
to whome I am myche bounde. ffurthermore I beseche
yor lordshipe and ladieshipe ever in goode / longe / and
prosperus helthe wt honor. ffrom Woburn the
first daye of Julye

By yor humble and
owne Son George
Bassette

The next letter of 1533 is from Sir William Kingston, who was a member of the King’s Privy Council and
Constable of the Tower of London at the time. It is an example of an educated man’s style of writing
which, at first glance, would be unacceptable today in its presentation because there is no punctuation.
Several names of birds used in hawking or falconry are mentioned.

Sir William Kingston to Lord Lisle, 26 September 1533

my lord to
advertyse you of newes here be nonne 3it or now that be
abowt the pesse (= peace) in the marches of scotland & with goddes
grace all shalbe well & as 3it the kynges grace hathe
hard now word from my lord of Wynchester & so the
kyng hawkes evry day with goshawkes* & other hawkes
that ys to say layners,* sparhawkes* and merlions* both affore
none & after yf the wether serve I pray you my lord yf
ther be hony gerfawken* or yerkyn* to help ^me to both yf it
may be & for lak of bothe to have wun & to send me
worde of the charges ther of & then your lordshyp dose meche
for me I & my wyfe both ryght hartely recõmaunde hus
unto my gud lady & we thanke my lady for my token for it
cam to me in the church of the blake freres (= friars) & my wyf
was desposed to have offerd it to saynt loy (= St Eligius) (th)at hyr horse
shuld not halt & he never went up ryght syne (= since) I be(see)che your
lordshyp to have me in your reymembrance to master porter
& my lady & to master mershall & my lady …

* Goshawks, lanners (southern European falcons), sparrowhawks, merlins (small falcons), gyrfalcons (large falcons),
and jerkins (male gyrfalcons), respectively.

Exercise
Using the two passages, describe the ‘approved Tudor manner’. Is the spelling significantly irregular or
inconsistent? How many words have more than one spelling? What do the phrases to advertise you of newes
and yf the wether serve mean?

An example of formal written language contemporary with the Lisle Letters is Sir Thomas Elyot’s The boke
named the Gouernor, printed in London in 1531 and dedicated to Henry VIII. Elyot’s purpose was ‘to
describe in our vulgare tunge/the fourme of a iuste publike weale (= welfare or prosperity)’. He wrote in
English but regarded Latin as the essential language of education and learning. In the second and third
passages, Elyot sets out a programme for young noblemen in which learning Latin begins before the age of
seven.

Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Gouernor, 1531 (i)

Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Gouernor, 1531 (ii)
The ordre of lernyng that a noble man
shulde be trayned in before he come
to thaige of seuen yeres. Cap. v. (= Chapter 5)

Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Gouernor, 1531 (iii)

Exercise
1. Explain the few alternative spellings in the texts: hit/it, latin/latine/latyne, onely/only, shal/shall,

significacions/signification, ther/there, thinge/thyng, which/whiche.
2. What was the meaning of the following words in the 1530s: common, vulgare, astates, equite, diuers,

betoken, abused, discrepance, sensualite?
3. Do any verb inflexions differ from those of Standard English today?

During the sixteenth century, writers were responding to a growing sense that the language needed an
agreed form of spelling, grammar, and vocabulary, just as Latin had. People saw that the letters of the
alphabet were too few to match the sounds of English, and that the spelling of many words did not match
their pronunciation. A common description was that it was ‘corrupted’.

One of the earliest books which advocated a reform of English spelling was John Hart’s An Orthographie,
published in 1569. In the following extract, he is justifying the need for his new spelling system, ‘the new
maner’. An example of the system he devised is given below.

John Hart’s An Orthographie, 1569 (i) John Hart’s An Orthographie, 1569 (ii)

Version with Modern English Spelling

An exercise of that which is said: wherein is de- I have ended the writing, and you the reading of
clared, how the rest of the consonants are made this book, I doubt not but you and I shall think
our labours well bestowed. ~ / And not-with-stan-
by th’instruments of the mouth: which ding that I have devised this new manner of wri-
was omitted in the premisses, for that ting for our /English, I mean not that /Latin
should be written in these lettes, no more then the
we did not much abuse /Greek or /Hebrew, neither would I write t’any
them. Chapter vii.

In this title above-written, I consi- man of strange nation in these letters, but
der of the <i> in exercise, & of the when as I would write /English. ~ / And as I would
<u>, in instruments: the like of the gladly counterfeit his speech with my tongue, so would
<i>, in title, which the common man, I in his writing with my hand. ~ / Yet who could
and many learned, do sound in the let me t’use my pen the best I could, thereby t’
diphthongs <ei>, and <iu>: yet I attain the sooner to the perfect pronunciation, of a-
would not think it meet to write them, in those ny strange speech: but writing /English, we may
and like words, where the sound of the vowel on- (as is said) use for every strange word, the same
ly, may be as well allowed in our speech, as that of marks or letters of voices which we do not find in
the diphthong used of the rude: and so far I allow speech, without any other regard to show by wri-
observation for derivations. ~ / Whereby you may ting whence the word is borrowed, then as we do in
perceive, that our single sounding and use of let- speaking. ~ / For such curiosity in superfluous let-
ters, may in process of time, bring our whole nation ters, for derivation of difference, and so forth, is
to one certain, perfet and general speaking. ~ the disordering and confounding, of any wri-
/ Wherein she must be ruled by the learned from ting: contrary to the law of the perfection there-
time to time. ~ / And I can not blame any man of, and against all reason: whereby, it should be o-
to think this manner of new writing stange, for bedient unto the pronunciation, as to her lady
I do confess it is strange to my self, though before and mistress: and so, add or diminish as she shall
in success of time command. ~ /

Exercise
Discuss what an ideal alphabetic system of spelling should be like and give some examples of what Hart calls
‘confusion and disorder’ in our present system. How many letters are there in the Roman alphabet and how
many contrastive sounds (phonemes) are there in English today? What are some of the ways in which the
mismatch between phonemes (Hart’s voices) and letters (Hart’s markes) has been dealt with in our spelling
system. Which of them developed in ME before the sixteenth century?

Sir Thomas Elyot expressed a scholar’s view on the superiority of the resources of Latin, from which
hundreds of words were ‘Englished’. These words were disparagingly referred to as ‘inkhorn terms’ – words
coming from the scholar’s horn of ink and therefore pedantic – and there was a lot of controversy over this.
This is illustrated in the following passages, all from the 16th century.

1. Thomas Lupset, A Treatise of Charitie (1533)
…whan we be driuen to speake of thynges that lacke the names in oure tonge, we be also driuen to borowe the wordes
that we haue not, sometyme out of Latin, sometyme out of Greke, euen as the Latin tonge doth in like necessitie
borowe and take of other. And though now at fyrst hearyng this word stondethe straungelye with you, yet by vse it
shall waxe familiar, specially when you haue it in this maner expressed vnto you.

2. Sir Thomas Elyot, The Book named the Gouernor (1531)
His Highnesse [Henry VIII] benignely receyuynge my boke, whiche I named The Gouernor, in the redynge therof sone
perceyued that I intended to augment our Englyshe tongue, wherby men shulde as well expresse more abundantly the
thynge that they conceyued in theyr hartis – wherfore language was ordeyned – hauyng wordes apte for the pourpose,
as also interprete out of Greke, Latyn, or any other tonge into Englysshe as sufficiently as out of any one of the said
tongues into another. His Grace also perceyued that throughout the boke there was no terme new made by me of a
Latine or Frenche worde but it is there declared so playnly by one mene or other to a diligent reder that no sentence is
therby made derke or harde to vnderstande.

3. Thomas Wilson, The Art of Rhetorique (1533)
Among all other lessons this should first be learned, that wee neuer affect any straunge ynkhorne termes, but to speake
as is commonly receiued, neither seeking to be ouer-fine nor yet liuing ouer-carelesse, vsing our speeche as most men
doe and ordering our wittes as the fewest haue done. Some seeke so far for outlandish English that they forget
altogether their mothers language. And I dare sweare this, if some of their mothers were aliue thei were not able to tell
what they say; and yet these fine English clerkes will say they speake in their mother tongue, if a man should charge
them for counterfeiting the Kings English. Some farre-iourneyed gentlemen at their returne home, like as they loue to
goe in forraine aparell, so thei wil pouder their talke with oversea language. He that commeth lately out of Fraunce will
talke French English and neuer blush at the matter. Another chops in with English Italienated, and applieth the
Italian phrase to our English speaking, which is as if an oratour that professeth to vtter his mind in plaine Latine
would needs speake poetrie, and farre-fetched colours of straunge antiquitie.

4. Sir John Cheke, letter (1557)
I am of this opinion, that our own tung shold be written cleane and pure, vnmixt and vnmangled with borowing of
other tunges; wherein if we take not heed bi tijm, euer borowing and neuer payeing, she shall be fain to keep her
house as bankrupt. For then doth our tung naturallie and praisablie vtter her meaning, whan she boroweth no
conterfeitness of other tunges to attire herself withall, but vseth plainlie her own with such shift as nature, craft,
experiens, and folowing of other excellent doth lead her vnto.

5. William Turner, comments on a religious treatise (1543)
This translatour hath applied himselfe as much as he can to find out the most plain and vsed wordes that be in
England, that men of all shyres of England maye the more easly perceiue the meaneing of the boke. Summe
noweadayes, more sekynge their owne glorye then the profite of the readers, writ so French Englishe and so Latine
that no man, except he be both a Latin man, a French man, and also an Englishe man, shal be able to vnderstande
their writinge – whose example I would disswade all men to folowe. For the people, if they should haue any profite by
such mennes laboures, had nede of two dictionaries euer by them, one in French and another in Englishe; which
thing, because it is so tedious, it would pluck back all men from the redynge of such good and Christen bokes as they
do translate.

6. Arthur Golding, The Trewnesse of the Christian Religion (1587)
[The work was begun by Sir Philip Sidney and completed by Golding.]

In his [Sidney’s] name, therefore, and as executor of his will in that behalf, I humbly offer this excellent worke vnto
your good Lordship, as his and not myne. Wherein if any words or phrases shall seem straunge (as in some places
perchaunce they may) I doubt not but your good Lordship will impute it to the rareness and profoundnesse of the
matters there handled, not accustomed heretofore to bee treated in our language. For the auoiding of which
inconuenience as much as might be, great care hath been taken, by forming and deryuing of fit names and termes out
of the fountaynes of our own tongue (though not altogether most vsual, yet alwais conveyuable and easie to be
understood), rather than by vsurping the Latin termes or by borrowing the words of any foreine language, least the
matters which in some cases are misticall enough of themselues by reason of their owne profoundnesse might haue
bene made more obscure to the vnlearned by setting them downe in terms vtterly vnknowne vnto them.

7. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589)

auncient feete means the verse rhythms of the classical Latin and Greek poets. A foot is a unit of rhythm.
peeuish here indicates distaste: ‘expressing rather the speaker’s feeling than any quality of the object referred to’
(OED).

8. Ralph Lever, The Arte of Reason, rightly termed Witcraft (1573)
a. Nowe whereas a number of men doe suppose that our language hath no words fitte to expresse the rules of this
arte [rhetoric], and whereas some men do argue that it must needes be so, bycause they that speake or write
thereof at large vse termes and wordes that no mere English man can vnderstonde, it is playn that neyther their
supposition is true nor yet their reason good. For as time doth inuent a newe forme of building, a straunge
fashion of apparell, and a newe kinde of artillerie and munitions, so doe men by consent of speache frame and
deuise new names, fit to make knowen their strange deuises.
b. As for deuising of newe termes, and compounding of wordes, our tongue hath a speciall grace, wherein it
excelleth many other, and is comparable with the best. The cause is, for that the moste parte of Englyshe
wordes are shorte, and stand on one sillable apeece, so that two or three of them are ofte-times fitly ioyned in
one. Of these kinde of wordes I haue deuysed many.

9. E.K., preface to Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender (1579)
…in my opinion it is one special prayse, of many whych are dew to this poete, that he hath laboured to restore, as to
their rightfull heritage, such good and naturall words as haue ben long time out of vse and almost cleare disherited.
Which is the onely cause that our mother tonge, which truely of itself is both ful enough for prose and stately enough
for verse, hath long time ben counted most bare and barrein of both.

Elements in the Vocabulary of Early Modern English

Although the vocabulary we use most frequently in every-day conversation can be traced back to OE and
ME, the vast majority of the words to be found in dictionaries date from after 1500. The following list gives
different types of additions to the lexicon between 1500 and 1700.

1. Words current in Early Modern English but now obsolete
contemn ‘despise’, fantastical ‘existing only in imagination, fanciful’, festinate ‘hasty’, mislike ‘dislike’, revengement
‘retribution, punishment’

2. New vocabulary of short duration in Early Modern English
armipotent ‘mighty in arms’, eximious ‘excellent, eminent’, fatuate ‘to become silly, act foolishly’, lapidifical ‘concerned
with the making of stones’, lubrical ‘smooth, slippery’, perflatile ‘exposed to the wind, airy’, suppeditate ‘to overthrow,
subdue’, temulent ‘drunken, intoxicated’

3. Loanwords acquired after 1500 and still used
analysis (16c), cabinet (16c), deflect (17c), detail (17c), develop (17c), dictionary (16c), judicious (16c), major (16c), method
(16c), polymath (17c), refuge (17c), research (16c), selection (17c), society (16c)

4. Ways in which new words were formed

Compounding: daybreak (16c), home-spun (16c)

Suffixation: scholarship (16c)

Conversion: contest (17c noun, from verb)
Verbs from nouns: 16c – grade, mask, sample, shipwreck, whitewash; 17c – blanket, lacquer,
model, puncture
Verbs from adjectives: 16c – empty, equal, idle, mellow, obscure; 17c – lower, muddy, numb
Nouns from verbs: 16c – blemish, push, shine; 17c – hitch, shudder, struggle
Back-formation:
Verbs from agent-nouns: 16c – peddle; 17c – scavenge
Verbs from compound nouns or adjectives: 16c – backslide, rough-hew; 17c – browbeat, eavesdrop, spoonfeed
Shortening: coz (16c, from cousin), chap (16c, from chapman), gent (16c, from
gentleman), van (17c, from vanguard), wig (17c, from periwig)
Phonetic symbolism: bang (16c), clang (16c), purr (17c), quack (17c)

We have seen that loanwords formed an important component of English vocabulary in OE and ME. In
Modern English loanwords have been adopted at an incredible rate. A list of examples from different
languages and centuries is given below:

Latin
16th century: abrupt, abscond, accurate, adjunct, adumbrate, aggravate, allude, ambiguous, anarchy, aqueduct, area,
audible, belligerent, bucolic, captivate, catastrophe, censor, century, diagonal, dictionary, ebullient, encomium, estuary,
exterior, fluent, futile, genial, gerund, gladiator, gradation, imprecation, inchoate, inveterate, inarticulate, meticulous,
metropolis, munificent, myriad, nefarious, negotiate, notion, numeral, obsolete, obtrude, omen, ovation, pallid,
parabola, pecuniary, peninsula, plausible, proficient, pungent, recant, recuperate, salient, sector, segregate, species,
thesis, turbulent, vertigo

17th century: abduction, abstemious, acclaim, accretion, acquiesce, adept, adventitious, ancillary, apparatus, apposite,
armament, atmosphere, atrocious, calculus, capillary, carnivorous, castigate, cathartic, chrysalis, decimal, delinquent,
derelict, diploma, discriminate, dogma, elastic, emissary, emollient, farrago, fatuous, fluctuate, formula, fulcrum,
garrulous, graphic, hallucination, hesitate, hieratic, innuendo, mereticious, miscellaneous, nascent, noxious,
ornithology, parahernalia, phenomenon, philanthropy, primogeniture, recondite, stagnant, tendency, torpor, turgid

Greek
16th century: topic; 17th century: autonomy, demagogue, dichotomy, euthanasia, pathos, protagonist, strophe, threnody

Literary terms adopted from Latin and Greek
alliteration, anaphora, antithesis, apostrophe, hemistich, hendiadys, hexameter, hyperbole, iambus, irony, litotes,
metonymy, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, pentameter, periphrasis, trochee, trope, zeugma

New Formations from Latin or Greek elements
17th century: barometer, microphone (‘an instrument by which small sounds can be intensified’)

French
16th century: abeyance, abscess, adage, affable, artisan, bastion, baton, battalion, bourgeois, buffoon, buffet, bullet,
cabinet, cannon, colonel, decadence, demolish, entrance, gauze, grotesque, machine, minion, moustache, musket,
piquant, pioneer, populace, rendezvous, sally, surpass, terrace, trenchant, trophy, vogue, volley

17th century: accolade, adjust, adroit, aggrandise, alert, ammunition, altitude, avenue, balustrade, barricade, bayonet,
bizarre, brigade, brilliant, brusque, buccaneer, bulletin, bureau, cajole, campaign, cascade, chandelier, charlatan,
dragoon, effete, façade, grimace, marauder, nonchalance, omelette, parade, rapport, tableau

Italian
16th century: argosy, artichoke, ballot, biretta, canto, carnival, cupola, gondola, macaroni, madrigal, motto,
mountebank, squadron, stucco

17th century: balcony, baritone, broccoli, chiaroscuro, gambit, incognito, lagoon, opera, portico, regatta, sonata,
virtuoso

Spanish
16th century: anchovy, armada, armadillo, banana, bravado, cannibal, potato, renegade, sherry, tornado

17th century: alligator, avocado, barbecue, cargo, matador, siesta, vanilla

Dutch or Low German
16th century: cambric, freebooter, landscape, muff, splice, yacht

17th century: brandy, easel, knapsack, slim, smuggle

High German
17th century: hamster, plunder, sauerkraut

Indian languages
17th century: bungalow, chintz, juggernaut, pundit

Portuguese
buffalo (16c), flamingo (16c), macaw (17c)

The problem of dialect which so troubled Caxton in the fifteenth century was still an issue when George
Puttenham published his The Arte of English Poesie in 1589. Puttenham’s purpose is to advise poets which
dialect to write in.

Exercise
Describe the assumptions about language which are evident in the text. Comment particularly on (a) his use
of the word corruptions, (b) his reference to a language which is naturall, pure and the most vsuall, (c) his
references to the inferiour sort of men and women, (d) the attitude implied in any speach vsed beyond the riuer
of Trent.

This is not to say that dialect could not be used to brilliant effect in literature. We have already seen
Chaucer’s use of the Northern dialect in The Reeve’s Tale, and William Shakespeare’s Henry V has another
famous example.

Exercise
The names of the captains in the comic dialogue above, Gower, Fluellen, Mackmorrice, and Iamy, give
them away as an Englishman, a Welshman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman. Discuss some of the dialect
features which Shakespeare attempts to represent.

Richard Verstegan, in his A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (1605), discusses the existence of dialects:

This is a thing that easely may happen in so spatious a toung as this, it beeing spoken in so many different countries
and regions, when wee see that in some seueral partes of England it self, both the names of things and
pronountiations of woords are somwhat different, and that among the countrey people that neuer borrow any
woords out of Latin or French, and of this different pronountiation one example in steed of may shal suffise, as this:
for pronouncing according as one would say at London, I would eat more cheese yf I had it / the northern man saith,
Ay sud eat mare cheese gin ay hadet / and the westerne man saith: Chud eat more cheese an chad it. Lo heer three
different pronoutiations in our own countrey in one thing, & heerof many the lyke examples might be alleaged.

More dialect features are to be found in a passage from Shakespeare’s King Lear:

Exercise
Edgar, the Duke of Gloucester’s son, banished by King Lear, disguises himself as a madman – a Tom of
Bedlam. At one point, defending his blinded father, his speech becomes clearly dialectal. In the above
passage, Gloucester does not recognise his son and cannot see him. The Steward believes Edgar to be a
beggar. Which of Richard Verstegan’s examples does Edgar’s speech resemble? The scene of the play is set
in Kent. The words ice try stand for I sal try. Sal for shall and gate for way are both northern forms. Is
Shakespeare accurately reproducing a regional dialect? Another significant feature of the passage above is the
changing use of the second person pronouns thou/thee/thine and ye/you/your. Is there any system to the
appearance of these forms? Is it the same as it would be in Middle English?

George Fox (1624-1691) was the son of a Leicestershire weaver who experienced a religious conversion and
became a preacher, and eventually a founder of the Society of Friends, or Quakers. At this time, failure to
conform to the doctrines and practice of the Church meant civil penalties, and he was gaoled (jailed) many
times. During a long stay in a Worcester gaol, he dictated his experiences to his son-in-law (and fellow
prisoner). The following text is a reproduction of a letter to Justice Bennett, who first coined the term
‘Quakers’ in 1650.

The Journal of George Fox (1650)
...thou wast the first man in the nation that gave the people the name quaker And Called them quakers, when thou
Examinest George in thy house att Derbey (which they had never the name before) now A Justice to wrong name
people, what may the brutish people doe, if such A one A Justice of peace gives names to men, but thou art Lifted upp
proud and haughty and soe turnest Against the Just one given upp to misname the saints, and to make lyes for others
to beeleve.

The grammar and lack of punctuation are typical for a letter for this time, as we have seen. What is
remarkable is Fox’s insistence on using thou to a Justice of the Peace. In 1660, he published a pamphlet on
the subject. He believed that the use of thou to address one person was a mark of equality between people,
whereas it had long been used to mark social superiority or inferiority.

George Fox, A Battle-Door for Teachers (1660)
For all you Doctors, Teachers, Schollars, and School-masters, that teach people in your Hebrew, Greek, Latine, and
English Grammars, Plural and Singular; that is, Thou to one, and You to many, and when they learn it, they must not
practice it: what good doth your teaching do them? for he is a Novice, and an Ideot, and a fool called by You, that
practises it; Plural, You to many; and Singular, Thou to one.

Exercise
Fox’s is full of accounts of violent attacks on Fox and his followers for their faith and preaching. The extract
on the next page is typical and makes a useful indicator of one variety of written style in the seventeenth
century. Compare it to the ‘aureate’, or rhetorical, style in the extracts taken from A Speech of Mr John
Milton for the Liberty of Vnlicenc'd Printing, to the Parliament of England, printed in the Yeare 1644', known as
Areopagitica (after the Areopagus, the highest civil court in Ancient Athens).

The Journal of George Fox, 1652 (iv)

... then we went away to Balby about a mile off: & the rude people layde waite & stoned us doune the lane but
blessed be ye Lorde wee did not receive much hurte: & then ye next first day (= Fox’s term for Sunday) I went to
Tickill & there ye friends (= members of the Society of Friends) of yt side gathered togeather & there was a meetinge
(= Quaker term for a religious service).

And I went out of ye meetinge to ye steeplehouse & ye preist & most of ye heads of ye parish was gott uppe
Into ye chancell & soe I went uppe to ym & when I began to speake they fell upon mee & ye Clarke uppe with his
bible as I was speakinge & hitt mee in ye face yt my face gusht out with bloode yt I bleade exceedingely in ye
steeplehouse & soe ye people cryed letts have him out of ye Church as they caled it: & when they had mee out
they exceedingely beate mee & threw me doune & threw mee over a hedge: & after dragged mee through a house
Into ye street stoneinge & beatinge mee: & they gott my hatt from mee which I never gott againe.

Soe when I was gott upon my leggs I declared to ym ye worde of life & showed to ym ye fruites of there
teachers & howe they dishonored Christianity.

And soe after a while I gott Into ye meetinge againe amongst freinds & ye preist & people comeinge by ye
house I went foorth with freinds Into ye Yarde & there I spoake to ye preist & people: & the preist scoffed at us
& caled us Quakers: but ye Lords power was soe over ym all: & ye worde of life was declared in soe much power &
dreade to ym yt ye preist fell a tremblinge himselfe yt one saide unto him looke howe ye preist trembles & shakes
hee is turned a Quaker alsoe.

John Milton’s Areopagitica (i)

John Milton’s Areopagitica (ii)

For as in a body, when the blood is freŁh, the Łpirits pure and
vigorous, not only to vital, but to rationall faculties, and thoŁe in
the acute֙, and perte֙ operations of wit and Łuttlety, it argues
in what good plight and con֙itution the body is, Ło when the
cherfulneŁŁe of the people is Ło sprightly up, as that it has, not only
wherewith to guard well its own freedom and Łafety, but to Łpare,
and to be֙ow upon the Łolide֙ and Łublime֙ points of controver-
Łie, and new invention, it betok’ns us not degenerated, not droo-
ping to a fatall decay, but ca֙ing off the old and wrincl’d skin of
corruption to outlive theŁe pangs and wax young again, entring
the glorious waies of Truth and proŁperous vertue de֙in’d to be-
come great honourable in theŁe latter ages. Methinks I Łee
in my mind a noble and puiŁŁant Nation rouŁing herŁelf like a ֙rong
man after Łleep, and Łhaking her invincible locks : Methinks I Łee
her as an Eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazl’d
eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unŁealing her long abu-
Łed Łight at the fountain it Łelf of heav’nly radiance; while the
whole noiŁe of timorous and flocking birds, with thoŁe alŁo that
love the twilight, flutter about, amaz’d at what Łhe means, and in
their envious gabble would progno֙icat a year of Łects and ŁchiŁms.

Literary style in the late seventeenth century became increasingly less rhetorical, as an interest in careful
observation was encouraged by the growth of the natural sciences. In 1662, the Royal Society of London for
the Improving of Natural Knowledge, usually called just The Royal Society, was founded under the
patronage of Charles II, who had been restored to the throne in 1660. It’s founder was John Evelyn, a
sample of whose diary is given below. In the second passage, Thomas Sprat, Secretary of the Royal Society
in 1667, discusses the prose style being developed for scientific papers.

John Evelyn’s diary for 2 and 3 June 1658

2 An extraordinary storme of haile & raine, cold season as winter, wind northerly
neere 6 moneths. 3 large Whale taken, twixt my Land butting on ye Thames &
Greenwich, which drew an infinite Concourse to see it, by water, horse, Coach on
foote from Lon’d, & all parts: It appeared first below Greenwich at low-water, for at
high water, it would have destroyed all ye boates: but lying now in shallow water,
incompassed wth boates, after a long Conflict it was killed with the harping yrons, &
struck in ye head, out of which spouted blood and water, by two tunnells like Smoake
from a chimny: & after an horrid grone it ran quite on shore & died: The length was
58 foote: 16 in height, black skin’d like Coach-leather, very small eyes, great taile,
small finns & but 2: a piked (= pointed) snout, & a mouth so wide & divers men
might have stood upright in it: No teeth at all, but scujed the slime onely as thro a
grate made of yt bone wch we call Whale bone: The throate yet so narrow, as woud

downewards, from ye upper jaw, & was hairy towards the Ends, & bottome
withinside: all of its prodigious, but in nothing more wonderfull then that an Animal of
so greate a bulk, should be nourished onely by slime, thrû those grates:

a) The bones making ye grate.
b) The Tongue, c. ye finn. d ye Eye:
e) one of ye bones making the
grate (a) f ye Tunnells thrû
which shutting ye mouth, the
water is forced upward, at
least 30 foote, like a black thick
mist. &c:

Thomas Sprat’s The History of The Royal Society, 1667

Elements in the Vocabulary of Modern English: 1700 to the present
As in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the last three hundred years have witnessed an explosion of
new words and a heavy adoption of loanwords. A list of examples from different languages and centuries is
given below:

1. Loanwords acquired after 1500 and still used
evaluate (19c), proliferate (19c), statistics (18c)

2. Ways in which new words were formed

Compounding: blackboard (19c), shortfall (20c), large-scale (19c), spellbound (18c)

Prefixation: disconnect (18c), subway (19c), transatlantic (18c)

Suffixation: hyphenate (19c)

Conversion:

Verbs from nouns: 18c – badger, guarantee, handcuff, queue, shepherd; 19c – blacklist,

buttonhole, loot, schedule, signal, wolf; 20c – audition, freewheel,

package, process, service

Verbs from adjectives: 18c – negative; 19c – best, tidy

Nouns from verbs: 18c – bid, finish, ride; 19c – muddle, shampoo, spin

Back-formation:

Verbs from agent-nouns: 18c – swindle, edit; 19c – burgle, sculpt

Verbs from object-nouns: 18c – resurrect; 19c – donate; 20c – televise

Verbs from compound nouns or adjectives: 18c – waterlog; 19c – stage-manage; 20c – brainwash, sleepwalk

Shortening: canter (18c, from Canterbury pace), gin (18c from geneva < Dutch

genever ‘spirit flavoured with juniper’; cf. French genièvre ‘juniper’),

fan (19c, from fanatic), van (19c, from caravan), phone (20c, from

telephone)

Blending: chortle (19c), guestimate (20c), motel (20c), smog (20c)

Phonetic symbolism: smash (18c), snigger (18c), squawk (19c)

3. New vocabulary formed from classical elements
carcinogenic (20c), chromosome (20c), haemoglobin (19c), isotope (20c)

4. Additions to the vocabulary in the present century
let-down (1933), liaise (1902), limousine (1902)
leptocaul ‘tree having a thin primary stem and branches’ (1949), leptosomic ‘having a physique characterised by
leanness and tallnes’ (1936), lichenometry ‘method of dating surfaces by the size of the lichens growing on
them’ (1957), linomycin (an antibiotic) (1963)

Loanwords
Latin
18th century: adjuducate, affiliate, amorphous, antiseptic, aroma, habitat, inertia, minutiae, moribund,
nucleus, prospectus, ultimatum.

19th century: agoraphobia, amnesia, amoeba, amorphous, antiseptic, anaesthesia, aquarium, bacterium,
bestiary bovine, candelabrum, chiasmus, moratorium, neuralgia, orchid, referendum, sanatorium.

Greek
18th century: aphrodisiac, bathos.

19th century: asteroid, demotic, pylon.

Formations from Latin and Greek elements
18th century: heliography (‘description of the sun’)

19th century: agnostic, epistemology, gramophone, isobar, megalomania, metronome, monograph,
neurasthenia, neuropathology, photograph, phrenology, psychopath, seismometer, tachometer, taxidermist,
telepathy.

20th century: econometrics, ergonomics, glottochronology, television, thermodynamics.

French
18th century: amateur, assonance, aubergine, avalanche, banal, barque, bassoon, bonhomie, boudoir,
brochure, carafe, caramel, carbon, casserole, début, echelon, élite, etiquette, guillotine, malaise, mentor,
nuance, ostensible, outré, predilection, ration, recherché, reconnaissance, terrain.

19th century: acrobate, altruism, ambience, ambulance, analogue, artesian, attaché, aviation, caffeine, calorie,
chauvinism, cliché, débâcle, entrepreneur, envisage, escarpement, fincé(e), flamboyant, gourmet, grandiose,
mauve, mayonnaise, mirage, monocle, mousse, picaresque, rapprochement, renaissance, silhouette,
trousseau.

20th century: chauffeur, collage, discothèque, garage.

Italian
18th century: al fresco, aria, arpeggio, ballerina, bravura, cantata, casino, concerto, dilletante, impressario,
libretto, obbligato, oratorio, pianoforte, portfolio, soprano, tempo, viola.

19th century: fiasco, graffiti, inferno, intermezzo, mafia, replica, spaghetti, studio, vendetta

20th century: pasta, pizza, tagliatelle

Spanish
18th century: bolero, fandango, flotilla, stevedore

19th century: bonanza, canyon, guerilla, rodeo, stampede

20th century: cafeteria, tango

Dutch or Low German
roster (18c), trek (19c, Afrikaans), apartheid (20c, Afrikaans)

High German
cobalt (18c), quartz (18c), waltz (18c), accordion (19c), marzipan (19c), paraffin (19c), poodle (19c), seminar
(19c), angst (20c), blitzkrieg (20c), ersatz (20c), strafe (20c)

Scottish Gaelic
pibroch (18c), whisky (18c)

Indian languages
shampoo (18c), chutney (19c), dinghy (19c)

Japanese
kimono (19c), tycoon (19c)

Russian
samovar (19c), vodka (19c)