The following dictionaries are quoted without further reference:—
Palsgrave, French and English (1530).
Cooper, Latin and English (1573).
Percyvall, Spanish and English (1591).
Florio, Italian and English (1598).
Cotgrave, French and English (1611).
Torriano, Italian and English (1659).
Hexham, Dutch and English (1660).
Ludwig, German and English (1716).
THE ROMANCE OF WORDS
CHAPTER I
OUR VOCABULARY
The bulk of our literary language is Latin, and consists of words either borrowed directly or taken from "learned" French forms. The every-day vocabulary of the less educated is of Old English, commonly called Anglo-Saxon, origin; and from the same source comes what we may call the machinery of the language, i.e., its inflexions, numerals, pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions. Along with Anglo-Saxon, we find a considerable number of words from the related Norse languages, this element being naturally strongest in the dialects of the north and east of England. The third great element of our working vocabulary is furnished by Old French, i.e., the language naturally developed from the spoken Latin of the Roman soldiers and colonists, generally called Vulgar Latin. To its composite character English owes its unequalled richness in expression. For most ideas we have three separate terms, or groups of terms, which, often starting from the same metaphor, serve to express different shades of meaning. Thus a deed done with malice prepense (an Old French compound from Lat. pensare, to weigh), is deliberate or pondered, both Latin words which mean literally "weighed"; but the four words convey four distinct shades of meaning. The Gk. sympathy is Lat. compassion, rendered in English by fellow-feeling.
Sometimes a native word has been completely supplanted by a loan word, e.g., Anglo-Sax. here, army (cf. Ger. Heer), gave way to Old Fr. (h)ost (p. [158]). This in its turn was replaced by army, Fr. armée, which, like its Spanish doublet armada, is really a feminine past participle with some word for host, band, etc., understood. Here has survived in Hereford, harbour (p. [164]), harbinger (p. [90]), etc., and in the verb harry (cf. Ger. verheeren, to harry).