Etymology of English words

1. Native English words

2. Causes and ways of borrowing

3. Assimilation of loan words. Types of assimilation

4. Degree of assimilation

5. Translation and semantic loans

6. Etymological doublets

1. Native English words

Etymologicaily the vocabulary of the English language is far from being

homogeneous. It consists of two layers - the native stock of words and the
borrowed stock of words. Native words comprise only 30 % of the total number
of words in the English vocabulary but the native words form the bulk of the most
frequent words actually used in speech and writing. The native element in English
comprises a large number of high-frequency words like the articles, prepositions,
pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries and, also, words denoting everyday objects and
ideas (e. g. house, child, water, go, come, eat, good, bad, etc.). Words belonging to
the subsets of the native word-stock are for the most part characterized by a wide
range of lexical and grammatical valency, high frequency value and a developed
polysemy; they are often monosyllabic, show great word-building power and enter
a number of set expressions. Furthermore, the grammatical structure is essentially
Germanic having remained unaffected by foreign influence.

A native word is a word which belongs to the original English stock, as known
from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. A loan word,
borrowed word or borrowing is a word taken over from another language and
modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the
standards of the English language.

The native words are further subdivided by diachronic linguistics into those of the
Indo-European stock and those of Common Germanic origin i.e. of words having
parallels in German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc., but none in Russian,
Ukrainian or French.
 The words having the cognates (words of the same etymological root, of
common origin) in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages form
the oldest layer which readily falls into definite semantic groups:

1. Family relations: father, mother, brother, son, daughter

2. Parts of the human body: foot, nose, lip, heart.
3. Animals: cow, swine, goose.
4. Plants: tree, birch, corn.
5. Time of day: day, night.
6. Heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star.
7. Numerous adjectives: red, new, glad, sad.
8. The numerals from one to a hundred.
9. Pronouns: personal (except they which is a Scandinavian borrowing);
demonstrative.
10. Numerous verbs: be, stand, sit, eat, know.

Some of the most frequent verbs are also of Indo-European common stock: bear,
come, sit, stand and others. The adjectives of this group denote concrete physical
properties: hard, quick, slow, red, white. Most numerals also belong here.
The Germanic element represents words of roots common to all or most
Germanic languages. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the same as
in the Indo-European element.

1. Parts of the human body: head, hand, arm, finger, bone.

2. Animals: bear, fox, calf.
3. Plants: oak, fir, grass.
4. Natural phenomena: rain, frost.
5. Seasons of the year: winter, spring, summer.
6. Landscape features: sea, land.
7. Human dwellings and furniture: house, room, bench.
8. Sea-going vessels: boat, ship.
9. Adjectives: green, blue, grey, white, small, thick, high, old, good.
10. Verbs: see, hear, speak, tell, say, answer, make, give, drink.

Many adverbs and pronouns also belong to this layer.

It is probably of some interest to mention that at various times purists have

tried to purge the English language of foreign words, replacing them with Anglo-
Saxon ones. One slogan created by these linguistic nationalists was: "Avoid Latin
derivatives; use brief, terse Anglo-Saxon monosyllables". The irony is that the
only Anglo-Saxon word in the entire slogan is "Anglo-Saxon".
2. Causes and ways of borrowing

Borrowing words from other languages is characteristic of English throughout

its history More than two thirds of the English vocabulary are borrowings. Mostly
they are words of Romanic origin (Latin, French, Italian, Spanish). Borrowed
words are different from native ones by their phonetic structure, by their
morphological structure and also by their grammatical forms. It is also
characterisitic of borrowings to be non-motivated semantically.
English history is very rich in different types of contacts with other countries,
that is why it is very rich in borrowings. The Roman invasion, the adoption of
Cristianity, Scandinavian and Norman conquests of the British Isles, the
development of British colonialism and trade and cultural relations served to
increase immensely the English vocabulary. The majority of these borrowings are
fully assimilated in English in their pronunciation, grammar, spelling and can be
hardly distinguished from native words.
English continues to take in foreign words , but now the quantity of borrowings
is not so abundant as it was before. All the more so, English now has become a
«giving» language, it has become Lingva franca of the twentieth century.
Borrowings can be classified according to different criteria:
a) according to the aspect which is borrowed,
b) according to the degree of assimilation,
c) according to the language from which the word was borrowed.

Causes of borrowing concerns the historical circumstances which stimulate the

borrowing process. Each time two nations come into close contact, certain
borrowings are a natural consequence. The nature of the contact may be different.
It may be wars, invasions or conquests when foreign words are in effect imposed
upon the reluctant conquered nation. There are also periods of peace when the
process of borrowing is due to trade and international cultural relations.
These latter circumstances are certainly more favourable for stimulating the
borrowing process, for during invasions and occupations the natural psychological
reaction of the oppressed nation is to reject and condemn the language of the
oppressor. In this respect the linguistic heritage of the Norman Conquest seems
exceptional, especially if compared to the influence of the Mongol-Tartar Yoke on
the Russian language.
The Norman culture of the 11th c. was certainly superior to that of the Saxons.
The result was that an immense number of French words forced their way into
English vocabulary. Yet, linguistically speaking, this seeming defeat turned into a
victory. Instead of being smashed and broken by the powerful intrusion of the
foreign element, the English language managed to preserve its essential structure
and vastly enriched its expressive resources with the new borrowings.
But all this only serves to explain the conditions which encourage the borrowing
process. The question of why words are borrowed by one language from another is
still unanswered.
Sometimes it is done to fill a gap in vocabulary. When the Saxons borrowed
Latin words for "butter", "plum", "beet", they did it because their own vocabularies
lacked words for these new objects. For the same reason the words potato and
tomato were borrowed by English from Spanish when these vegetables were first
brought to England by the Spaniards.
But there is also a great number of words which are borrowed for other reasons.
There may be a word (or even several words) which expresses some particular
concept, so that there is no gap in the vocabulary and there does not seem to be any
need for borrowing. Yet, one more word is borrowed which means almost the
same, — almost, but not exactly. It is borrowed because it represents the same
concept in some new aspect, supplies a new shade of meaning or a different
emotional colouring. This type of borrowing enlarges groups of synonyms and
greatly provides to enrich the expressive resources of the vocabulary. That is how
the Latin cordial was added to the native friendly, the French desire to wish, the
Latin admire and the French adore to like and love.

3. Assimilation of loan words. Types of assimilation

Words when they migrate from one language into another adjust themselves to
their new environment and get adapted to the norms of the recipient language.
They undergo certain changes which gradually erase their foreign features, and,
finally, they are assimilated. Sometimes the process of assimilation develops to the
point when the foreign origin of a word is quite unrecognisable (dinner, cat, take,
cup). Others, though well assimilated, still bear traces of their foreign background.
Distance and development, for instance, are identified as borrowings by their
French suffixes, skin and sky by the Scandinavian initial sk, police and regime by
the French stress on the last syllable.
The term assimilation of a loan word is used to denote a partial or total
conformation to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the
receiving language and its semantic system, i.e. the process of assimilation of
borrowings includes changes in sound form, morphological structure, grammar
characteristics, meaning and usage.
 Phonetic assimilation comprises changes in sound form and stress. Sounds that
were alien to the English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds, e.g. In the
recent French borrowings communique, cafe the long [e] and [c] are rendered with
the help of [ei]. The accent is usually transferred to the first syllable in the words
from foreign sources.
The lasting nature of phonetic adaptation is best shown by comparing Norman
French borrowings to later ones. The Norman borrowings have for a long time been
fully adapted to the phonetic system of the English language: such words as table,
plate, courage, chivalry bear no phonetic traces of their French origin. Some of the
later (Parisian) borrowings, even the ones borrowed as early as the 15th c, still sound
surprisingly French: regime, valise, matinee, cafe, ballet. In these cases phonetic
adaptation is not completed.
The three stages of gradual phonetic assimilation of French borrowings can be
illustrated by different phonetic variants of the word garage:
ge'ra:3>'gara:3> 'gerid3 (Amer.).
The degree of phonetic adaptation depends on the period of borrowing: the
earlier the period is the more completed is this adaptation.
Grammatical adaptation consists in a complete change of the former
paradigm of the borrowed word (i. e. system of the grammatical forms peculiar to it
as a part of speech). If it is a noun, it is certain to adopt, sooner or later, a new
system of declension; if it is a verb, it will be conjugated according to the rules of
the recipient language. Yet, this is also a lasting process. The English Renaissance
borrowings as datum (pi. data), phenomenon (pi. phenomena), criterion (pi.
criteria) whereas earlier Latin borrowings such as cup, plum, street, wall were
fully adapted to the grammatical system of the language long ago.
By semantic adaptation is meant adjustment to the system of meanings of the
vocabulary. Borrowing is generally caused either by the necessity to fill a gap in the
vocabulary or by a chance to add a synonym conveying an old concept in a new
way. Yet, the process of borrowing is not always so purposeful, logical and efficient
as it might seem at first sight. Sometimes a word may be borrowed "blindly", so to
speak, for no obvious reason, to find that it is not wanted because there is no gap in
the vocabulary nor in the group of synonyms which it could conveniently fill. Quite
a number of such "accidental" borrowings are very soon rejected by the vocabulary
and forgotten. But there are others which manage to take root by the process of
semantic adaptation. The adjective large, for instance, was borrowed from French in
the meaning of "wide". It was not actually wanted, because it fully coincided with
the English adjective wide without adding any new shades or aspects to its meaning.
This could have led to its rejection. Yet, large managed, to establish itself very
firmly in the English vocabulary by semantic adjustment. It entered another
synonymic group with the general meaning of "big in size". At first it was applied to
objects characterised by vast horizontal dimensions, thus retaining a trace of its
former meaning, and now, though still bearing some features of that meaning, is
successfully competing with big having approached it very closely, both in
frequency and meaning.
The adjective nice was a French borrowing meaning "silly" at first. The English
change of meaning seems to have arisen with the use of the word in expressions
like a nice distinction, meaning first "a silly, hair-splitting distinction", then a
precise one, ultimately an attractive one. But the original necessity for change was
caused once more by the fact that the meaning of "foolish" was not wanted in the
vocabulary and therefore nice was obliged to look for a gap in another semantic
field.
Thus the process of semantic assimilation has many forms:
1) narrowing of meanings (usually polysemantic words are borrowed in one of the
meanings);
2) specialization or generalization of meanings,
3) acquiring new meanings in the recipient language,
4) shifting a primary meaning to the position of a secondary meaning.

4. Degree of assimilation

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a)

from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the word belongs to the
same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is
assimilated easier, b) in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written
form, words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker, c) how often the borrowing 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 are subdivided into: completely assimilated, partly
assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms).
Completely assimilated loan words 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 loan words we find such frequent 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: table, chair, face, figure, finish,
matter etc
 Completely assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words in the language,
cf the French word «sport» and the native word «start». Completely assimilated
verbs belong to regular verbs, e.g. correct -corrected. Completely assimilated
nouns form their plural by means of s-inflexion, e.g. gate- gates. In completely
assimilated French words the stress has been shifted from the last syllable to the
last but one.
Semantic assimilation of borrowed words depends on the words existing in the
borrowing language, as a rule, a borrowed word does not bring all its meanings
into the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic, e.g. the Russian borrowing
«sputnik» is used in English only in one of its meanings.
Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following groups:
a) borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and
notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed
foreign clothing: mantilla, sombrero;
foreign titles and professions: shah, rajah, sheik, bei, toreador,
foreign vehicles: caique (Turkish), rickshaw (Chinese);
food and drinks: pilaw (Persian), sherbet (Arabian);
foreign currency: euro (Germany), rupee (India), rouble (Russia), etc.
b) borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, e.g. nouns borrowed from Latin
and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus - bacilli, phenomenon - phenomena,
datum -data, genius - genii etc.
c) borrowings non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with the initial
sounds /v/ and /z/, e.g. voice, zero. In native words these voiced consonants are
used only in the intervocal position as allophones of sounds /f/ and /s/ (loss - lose,
life - live). Some Scandinavian borrowings have consonants and combinations of
consonants which were not palatalized, e.g. /sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski etc (in
native words we have the palatalized sounds denoted by the digraph «sh», e.g.
shirt); sounds /k/ and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized e.g. girl, get, give,
kid, kill, kettle. In native words we have palatalization , e.g. German, child.
d) borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically, e.g. in Greak borrowings
«y» can be spelled in the middle of the word (symbol, synonym), «ph» denotes the
sound /f/ (phoneme, morpheme), «ch» denotes the sound /k/(chemistry,
chaos),«ps» denotes the sound /s/ (psychology).
Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms) are borrowings which are used by
Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, e.g. addio (Italian), tete-a-tete
(French), dolce vita (Italian), duende (Spanish), an homme a femme (French),
gonzo (Italian) etc.

5. Translation and semantic loans

The following types of borrowings can be distinguished:
- translation loans (calques) – words and expressions formed from the material
already existing in the English language but according to patterns taken from
another language by way of literal word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme
translation: e.g. chain smoker::Germ Kettenraucher; goes without saying::Fr. va
sans dire; summit conference:: Germ. Gipfel Konferenz, Fr. conférence au
sommet;
Translation loans are word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme) translations of
some foreign words or expressions. In such cases the notion is borrowed from a
foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units, «to take the bull by the
horns» (Latin), «fair sex» ( French), «living space» (German) etc. Some translation
loans appeared in English from Latin already in the Old English period, e.g.
Sunday (solis dies). There are translation loans from the languages of Indians such
as: «pipe of peace», «pale-faced», from German «masterpiece», «homesickness»,
«superman».
- semantic borrowing/loan is used to denote the development in an English word
of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language (e.g.
policy).
Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in
the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have two relative languages
which have common words with different meanings, e.g. there are semantic
borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as the meaning «to live» for
the word «to dwell’ which in Old English had the meaning «to wander». Or else
the meaning «дар», «подарок» for the word «gift» which in Old English had the
meaning «выкуп за жену».
Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word was borrowed into some
other language, developed there a new meaning and this new meaning was
borrowed back into English, e.g. «brigade» was borrowed into Russian and formed
the meaning «a working collective «бригада». This meaning was borrowed back
into English as a Russian borrowing. The same is true of the English word
«pioneer».

6. Etymological doublets

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. Such words are called etymological
doublets. 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 –
люб’язний, благородний, etymological doublets are: gentle - увічливий and
genteel - благородний. From the French word gallant etymological doublets are:
‘gallant - хоробрий and ga’llant - галантний, уважний.
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.
THE ETYMOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY
The native element The borrowed element
I. Indo-European element I. Celtic (5th-6th c. A. D.)
II. Germanic element II. Latin
III. English Proper element (no earlier 1st group: 1st c. B. C.
5th
thanc. A. D.) 2nd group: 7th c. A. D.
3rd group: the Renaissance period
III. Scandinavian (8th - 1 lth c. A. D.)
IV. French
I. Norman borrowings: 1 lth - 13th c. A. D.
2. Parisian borrowings (Renaissance)
V. Greek (Renaissance)
VI. Italian (Renaissance and later)
VII. Spanish (Renaissance and later)
VIII. German
IX. Indian
X. Russian And some other groups