The Development of English Word-Stock in the XII-XVII

Scandinavian Influence
Sk: sky, skin, skill, skirt, (OE scyrte – shirt);
Retention of the hard pronunciation of k and g: kid, dike (gitch), get, give
Place names: (600 place): Derby, Rugby (districts occupied by Danes)
Nouns: root, trust, want, window
Verbs: get, give, die, crawl, raise

French borrowings (2 stages)
1066 – 1250 (900 in number)
1250 – 1500

1066-1250
a) French speaking nobility: noble, dame, servant
b) Literary channels (Charlemagne’s romances): story, rime, lay
c) Church terms

1250-1500
Government and Administrative terms:
government, administer,
a) Fundamental terms:
crown, state, empire, realm, reign, royal, tax, parliament, subsidy.
b) Titles of offices:
office, treasurer
c) Economic organization of the society:
peasant, slave, servant

Ecclesiastical Words:
religion, theology, baptism, confession, prayer, lesson, passion.
Indications of rank or class: clergy, clerk, dean, abbess
The names of objects associated with religion: crucifix, image
Fundamental religious or theological concepts: salvation, virgin

Law
Names of crimes and misdemeanors: felony, arson, larceny, fraud
Suits, involving property: estate, bounds, property
Adjectives: just, innocent.

Army and Navy:
Navy, arms, battle, defense, soldier, spy, guard
Weapon: dart, lance
Verbs: to arm, to array, to defend

Fashion, Meals and Social Life
Gown, robe, frock, collar, embroidery
Verbs: adorn,
Collors: blue, brown, scarlet;
Dinner, supper, feast.

Art, learning, medicine
Art: art, painting, music, image, beauty
Literature: poet, romance, chapter
Medicine: physician, surgeon, malady

Latin Borrowings (third period):
Intellect, legal, limbo, zenith
Terms relating to law, medicine, theology, science, literature: -able, -ible, -ent, -al, -ous, -ive.
Aureate terms: unusual words: equipolent

Synonyms of three levels:
Deed – exploit
Take – apprehend

Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden and distinct change in pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) started, with vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the 16th century the British had contact with many peoples from around the world.

Words from Low Countries: Flemish, Dutch, Low German
trade: (Flemish)
navigation (Dutch and Low German)
deck, freight, dollar

French:
Classical languages: free borrowing and reconstitution of roots and affixes often in combination with native words and other loans; many Latin borrowings were doublets of words previously borrowed from French or Latin (invidious/envious, camera/chamber, paralysis/palsy, fragile/frail); Greek loans were highly specialized, scholarly words (anarchy, aorist, aphrodisiac)

Lat: factum, French: fait, English: feat
Verbs (Lat. or French?) explore, destroy.

French, many borrowings in specialized words (hospitable, gratitude, sociable); Italian, terms in trade, architecture, the arts (tariff, sonata, oratorio, balcony, ghetto); Spanish and Portuguese, terms related to exploration, colonization, exotic products (Spanish: cigar, potato, tomato, hammock, breeze, cockroach; Portuguese: mango, tank, yam, molasses); Dutch, terms in trade, seafaring, painting (cruise, yacht, landscape, sketch, brandy, uproar); German, terms in geology, mining, etc. (quartz, zinc, noodle, plunder, waltz); Celtic (leprechaun, plaid, shamrock, trousers, whiskey).

Romance Languages
French (books): chocolate, detail, progress
Italian: balcony, algebra, design, violin, volcano
Spanish and Portuguese: anchovy, armada, apricot, tobacco

Non-Indo-European Languages
English settlements in North America, borrowings mostly from from Algonquian languages, cultural terms, names of plants, animals, objects (moose, raccoon, skunk, hominy, pecan, squash); Asian languages, Chinese (ketchup, tea, ginseng), Japanese (soy, sake), Hindi (jungle, shampoo, bandanna)

Word Formation
affixing was the largest source of new words in English; new derivational affixes from Latin and Greek;
compounding (buttercup, jellyfish, nutcracker, pickpocket, good-looking, old-fashioned);
functional shift or zero derivation (noun to verb: badger, capture, pioneer);

clipping (arrear > rear);
back-formation (greedy > greed, difficulty > difficult, unity > unit);
blending (dumb + confound > dumfound);
proper names>common nouns (Fauna > fauna);

echoic words (boohoo, boom, bump, bah, blurt);
folk etymology (Dutch oproer [up + motion] > uproar); verb + adverb (take-out pick up);
reduplication (so-so, mama, papa);
words of unknown origin (baffle, chubby, lazy, pet, sleazy)

Varieties of English
From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English.

In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies).

Spanish also had an influence on American English (and subsequently British English), with words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words (through Louisiana) and West African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American English (and so, to an extent, British English).