An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

sco¯l ‘school’, together with a few words of a more general nature, hence
caul ‘cabbage’. On the other hand hæ¯lend ‘Saviour’, an entirely native
word, was used for Christ, rather than Latin dominus.
The second group of post-settlement Latin loans are, above all,
associated with the period of the Benedictine monastic revival which
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occurred in the second half of the tenth century. These loans are
normally quite different in character from any of the earlier loans, often
reflecting a different register of language, that is to say, they reflect a
form of language most suited to formal and highly educated language,
rather than the language of everyday speech, where the earlier loans
usually sat comfortably.
This difference is apparent in both the original language and Old
English. As far as Latin is concerned, these new loans regularly come not
from Vulgar Latin, as previously, but rather from the writers of Classical
Latin. This is demonstrated by the linguistic forms themselves and it
further implies that these new loans are part of the written rather than
the spoken language, a clear contrast with the earlier situation. In terms
of Old English we find that these new loans are not always well assimi-
lated into the language, so that they retain most or all of their Latin
structure. Furthermore, it is sometimes the case that a new word in fact
replicates an earlier loan of the same original word, but showing a
Classical, rather than a Vulgar, Latin form and without most of the
changes which occurred in the transition to Old English. A quite typical
example of this process is tabele ‘table’ alongside earlier tæfl.
Although many of these new loans are religious in nature, for example
apostata ‘apostate’ and sabbat ‘Sabbath’, others reflect the general world
of learning, and in particular curiosity about foreign lands. This latter
accounts for words such as cucumer ‘cucumber’ and delfin ‘dolphin’. The
formal nature of the new vocabulary can be seen in examples where the
Latin word replaces an Old English one, as in grammaticcræft ‘grammar’
for native stæfcræft.
Borrowings from Latin can take other forms than those discussed
above. One particular type is that of semantic loans. The basic shape of
such a loan is where the meaning of a Latin word is transferred to an
English word which did not originally have that meaning. For example,
the word tunge ‘tongue’ had at first only the meaning of the body part, but
under the influence of Latin lingua, which has not only that meaning but
also the meaning ‘language’, it also acquired the meaning ‘language’. A
slightly different type is found in Latin discipulus ‘disciple’, for in that
case what happened was that the Latin meaning was transferred to
English cniht ‘boy, servant’. In late Old English we also find what are
called loan translations, where a new complex expression is created in
imitation of a Latin complex expression. Thus we find, for example,
Latin praepositio ‘proposition’ turned into English forsetnys.
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8.6 Other loan words
There are only a few hundred Latin loan words in Old English, and as I
have shown, a great many of these, perhaps a third, are restricted to
formal registers, which includes not only technical writing but also
Latin–Old English glossaries. Nevertheless these loans provide the bulk
of loan words in Old English. The only other substantial group of loans
are, as I have said, from Scandinavian. Let us now therefore turn to these.
It is well-known that eventually English acquired a great many
important words, including even function words such as are, from the
Scandinavian languages. But it is also well-known that the overwhelming
majority of these words only begin to be found after the end of the Old
English period. Any discussion of Scandinavian loans is complicated by
the fact that two closely-related languages are involved. On the one hand
there is Danish, whose speakers occupied the north-east, Yorkshire
and down to East Anglia; on the other there is Norwegian, found in the
north-west.
Perhaps the first substantial evidence of Scandinavian influence is to
be found with place-names, although we mostly have to rely here on the
evidence of the Domesday Book, composed after the Norman Conquest.
Thus we find Danish suffixes such as -by ‘village’ or -
†
orp ‘farm’ and
Norwegian -
†
weit ‘clearing’ which eventually appear in place-names
such as Derby, Scunthorpe and Satterthwaite. The place-name evidence is
important as proof of the degree of contact between the English and the
Scandinavians, but it does not necessarily prove the assimilation of large
numbers of loan words into the ordinary language.
Many of the early Scandinavian loans are, naturally, associated with
seafaring, so we find hæfene ‘haven’, lending ‘a landing’, ste¯oresman ‘pilot’.
Others are legal terms, as a result of the Danelaw settlement, including
the word lagu ‘law’ itself, and connected with that is feolagu ‘fellow’. Many
of these words are to become common, for example hu¯sbonda ‘house-
holder’, but others have either been lost or become restricted in use,
e.g. carl ‘man’. There are a few verbs which have been borrowed, for
example eggian ‘egg on’, hittan ‘hit’.
Turning to other sources, perhaps the most striking feature is how few
words appear to have been borrowed from Celtic. It is true that many
place-names, of rivers, for example, retain their Celtic name; in the case
of Avon that name is widespread throughout Britain. There is a socio-
linguistic explanation for this, namely that the Celtic peoples formed
a subordinate group within the new Anglo-Saxon society, and hence
their language was shunned. Indeed, we can look at the position of Welsh
today for confirmation that things need not change, even over centuries.
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Settlement words borrowed from Celtic include dunn ‘dun’ and broc
‘badger’. Irish missionaries were extremely influential in the spread of
Christianity, and even if they regularly spoke Latin, they introduced a
few words from their native tongue, of which the most frequent is dry¯
‘magician’. Present-day cross is almost certainly a borrowing, possibly
very late in the period, since in Old English it did not replace the native
ro¯d ‘rood’.
Almost all French loans into English either occur after the Conquest
or during the preceding reign of Edward the Confessor. For the most