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The History of English Podcast
Episode 40: Learning Latin and Latin Learning
00:55:24
Long before the Normans arrived in England, the Anglo-Saxons were borrowing Latin words from the monastic culture which was emerging in the 7th and 8th centuries. In this episode, we explore the spread of monastic schools and scholarship in Anglo-Saxon...
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- [00:10]
Kevin Stroud
Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language. This is episode 40, learning Latin and Latin Learning. In this episode, we're going to explore the first significant foreign influence on the English language. With the rise of the Church and monastic schools, more and more people in Britain were speaking Latin. And as a result, Latin words began to infiltrate English. And this process was well underway over three centuries before the Normans arrived with their hoard of Latin derived words. So in this episode we'll explore this first period of Latin influence on English. But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com and you can always reach me directly@kevinistoryofenglishpodcast.com and I'm on Twitter Glish Histpod. So let's turn to English's first flirtation with Latin. As we know, Latin had once been a prominent language in Britain during the period of Roman rule. But after the Anglo Saxons arrived, English had displaced the other languages which had been spoken before, including Latin, Latin and the native Celtic languages. Over the next century or so, Latin largely fell out of use in the Anglo Saxon kingdoms. With the decline of Roman civilization, much of Britain not only lost the language of Rome, it also lost Rome's formal education system. The illiterate Anglo Saxons had no use for schools or serious academic study. But with the arrival of the church in the 600s, the both of those legacies of the Roman Empire began to make a comeback. The Church brought Latin, it brought writing and it brought schools. In fact, Augustine had established the first school in Canterbury shortly after he arrived in Kent in 597. But the more important contribution to Anglo Saxon education came from those northern monasteries, the ones which had maintained the tradition of those monastic schools in Ireland. As monasteries spread around Britain, the culture of the region started to change. Scholarship, literacy and formal education was returning. For the first time since the Romans, new towns and villages were popping up around many of those monasteries. And the monks were cultivating the monastery's lands. With new farming methods introduced from the continent, those techniques were spreading out to the natives. So there was a mini cultural revolution going on. Part of that cultural revolution is reflected in the language, because some of those Latin words imported from the continent began to mix with English words. During this period, the school at Canterbury flourished and scholars also came to London and Wessex. But the epicenter of this cultural earthquake was Northumbria. A couple of episodes back, we saw that the Northumbrian King Oswy had sided with Rome in matters of dispute between the Roman Church and the Irish Celtic church. But despite that decision, Northumbria remained solidly within the cultural orbit of the Irish Celtic Church. As we've seen before, that Irish monastic movement preserved much of the early Roman education system, with its teaching of the trivium, grammar, rhetoric and logic, and the quadrivium, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music. Those were the seven liberal arts. So as monastic schools were established in Northumbria, those schools continued that tradition. In addition to training students in Christianity, they also taught all those classical subjects. And prominent families would send their children to the Northumbrian monasteries for this type of education. In fact, some of the more prominent monasteries attracted people from all over continental Europe. The spread of those schools also led to a literary revival. Bibles and gospel books were copied, and lots of new texts were created. New religious commentaries were written. The lives of monks and saints were composed, general histories were compiled, and poems were written down and preserved. Most of this literature, though, was composed in Latin. But increasingly, English was taking its place beside Latin as an alternative language. And it's important to keep in mind that monks were not always stationary. Very often they traveled around to different monasteries, not only within the same kingdom, but also to other kingdoms. And as they moved, they would bring books with them, and they would stay for extended periods of time at the new monastery. And this meant that monks from different regions began to mix together. And that's how those different regional letters, like the thorn and the eth and the Roman yew and the runic wind, they all started to be mixed together. And the regional dialects of the various monks also began to be mixed together. In some of the earliest Old English texts, words are spelled in a variety of ways throughout the manuscript. A West Saxon diphthong might be used in one part of the text, but an Anglian spelling might be used in another part. And that suggests that different monks from different regions were contributing to the same manuscript. Now, we might wonder if those spelling differences were a concern at the time. And the answer is probably not. There were no dictionaries or standard spellings, so words were written down like they sounded. And since the various monks often spoke different dialects, they spelled their words differently. And those variations were normal and expected, just as pronunciation differences were normal and expected. In fact, the concern over the one correct or proper way to spell a word is a relatively recent phenomenon. Really, as recently as the 18th century, before that, spelling variations were common and acceptable. Now, not only did monks travel around the kingdoms of Britain, they also traveled to Ireland and to continental Europe. Ireland was still the homeland for this literary revival, which was taking place in Northumbria. And very often clerics would travel back to Ireland for additional education. They would often return with books from Irish monasteries. And the same thing happened with monks who traveled to continental Europe. They would also return with new books and manuscripts, and those books were added to the libraries in those monasteries in Britain. And this was a very important development because those monastic libraries compiled much of the learning and education of the day. And the reputation and prestige of a given monastery was often based around the size of its library. When King Oswy of Northumbria sided with Rome in the dispute with the Celtic Church, it opened new avenues of communication between Northumbria and Rome. It gave Northumbrian scholars direct access to Roman learning as well as the traditional Irish Celtic scholarship. One of King Oswy's thanes was a nobleman named Benedict Bishop. Throughout his life, Benedict made multiple trips to Rome, and he spent extended periods at monasteries in the Frankish kingdom as well. Thanks to his trips, he acquired a great deal of knowledge about the monasteries in Western Europe. After the death of King Oswy, Oswy's son Egfrith became king of Northumbria, and the new king reached out to Benedict to construct a new monastery. He gave Benedict some land, and Benedict looked to build a great monastery in the tradition of all of those monasteries he had visited back on the continent. So he headed back to the Frankish kingdom for artisans to help with the construction. But more importantly, he made multiple trips to Rome and other parts of Western Europe to stock the library of the new monastery. The new monastery ended up being a twin monastery, meaning it consisted of two separate buildings, one at Monk Wearmouth and the other about seven miles away at Jarrow. But it was considered to be one monastery, and thanks to the efforts of Benedict, that twin monastery had one of the best stocked libraries in all of Western Europe. It's a perfect example of the Continental influences which were streaming into Anglo Saxon Britain at the time. And that monastery is also important for another reason, because it produced the greatest scholar and teacher in all of Northern Europe, a monk named Bede. Bede grew up and spent most of his life in and around Jarrow. This is the region of northern England where the modern Geordie dialect emerged. And that dialect actually derived from the original Old English dialect spoken by people like Bede in and around this region of Northumbria. Bede was actually a small child when he was handed into the care of the monastery, initially the McWharemouth site. He was only seven years old, and it's not clear why he entered the monastery at such a young age. He may have been an orphan. Another theory is that he was a member of a noble family, and sometimes noble families place small children with monasteries. There's actually some evidence to support that second theory in the name Bede. It was not a common Anglo Saxon name, and some later scholars have noted that his name is coincidentally the name of the Old English word for prayer. Remember from the last episode that a prayer in Old English was a bead. So some have speculated that this name was intentionally given to him at birth with intentions that he would be raised as a monk. At any rate, from the very young age of 7, Bede was exposed to life in the monastery. A short time later, the second building at Jarrow was constructed and Bede moved there. And that's actually where he spent most of his life. The Jarrow monastery was built in stone and it had glass windows based on the styles in Rome. And that type of construction was unheard of at the time in Britain. This was also where Benedict Bishop constructed the massive library for all those books he had amassed from his travels in Europe. But a few years after the Jaro monastery was completed, a plague struck throughout the region and killed most of the monks there. The only survivors were the abbot in charge and the now 12 year old Bede. But between the two of them, they kept the services going. And it's likely that Bede passed the lonely hours reading books in the library and studying Latin and other Roman subjects. During his lifetime, Bede wrote at least 68 separate books, but he's most famous for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. It's the oldest proper history of England. And unlike other writers who purported to write history but routinely mixed in myths and legends, Bede tried to stick to the facts. He diligently researched and fact checked his material as much as he could. He relied upon the vast library around him, as well as other sources which he could access and verify. Almost all histories of the early Anglo Saxon period cite Bede as a source, because in many cases, he's the only source we have. In addition to his history, Bede also compiled a book of hymns and wrote commentaries on the Bible and stories about the lives of Christian martyrs. He was also a teacher, so he wrote about academic subjects, which included a spelling guide, science books, as well as books related to poetry, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and grammar. Unfortunately, most of Bede's works didn't survive the centuries. Part of the reason why scholars know that he wrote so many books is because his ecclesiastical History actually contains a list of other books which he wrote, and even though most of those books no longer exist, scholars have used it to estimate the number and content of his other books. Bede wrote in the same manner as other scribes of his day, on animal skin. And like other monks, Bede wrote with a quill and used a special type of acidic ink that literally ate into the skin. It was called encaustum in Latin, and that word is directly related to the word caustic in modern English, meaning biting or burning. As an historian, Bede did something else which was unique at the time, at least to the extent which he did it, and that was the use of dates in his history. Other historians use dates occasionally, but Bede put an emphasis on the timing and sequencing of events, and he really tried to tie the events down to a specific date where he could. And thanks to his emphasis on dating, he's primarily responsible for the fact that we still measure dates in history from the birth of Christ. It was Bede who coined the phrase anno Domini, meaning in the year of our Lord, and known to us today by the initials ad. The Romans had actually used a dating system based upon the dates in which their emperors acceded to the throne. But Bede argued that the Roman dating methods were pagan, and he felt strongly that the Church should rely upon an alternative method. He suggested that the Christian era should be dated from the birth of Christ, and he later used that method of dating for the first time when he wrote his ecclesiastical history. So when we use the initials A.D. after a date, we're actually hearkening back to Bede, an Englishman, not some Roman historian, like most scholars of his day. Bede wrote in Latin, not English, so his writings didn't have a great impact on English at the time. But his works were so important and influential that they were soon translated from Latin into Old English. And this process can be primarily attributed to the Wessex king. Alfred, who came to power a couple of centuries later. As we'll see in an upcoming episode, Alfred is one of the most important figures in the overall history of English because he preserved the language from destruction by the Viking invaders and beats Ecclesiastical History was one of those Latin works which was translated into Old English at Alfred's instruction, so that thanks to that translation, we do have Bede's history in Old English as well as Latin. Now, even though Bede wrote in Latin, it's clear that he held English in high regard. It's very apparent from his writings that he was a proud Anglo Saxon and the Best evidence we have of the value he placed on English can be found at the time of his death. He died at the age of 62, surrounded by his students, and they were actually helping him to finish his last work. And what was that work? Well, it was a translation of the Gospel of St. John into our language. In other words, from Latin into English. So by the end of his life, even Bede had recognized the importance of translating Latin religious text into English. And this little historical nugget confirms that English was increasingly seen as an alternative to Latin within those monasteries. Last time, we looked at what happened when those monks tried to translate those Latin terms into English, and we saw that the Anglo Saxon scribes tried to use English terms where they could, but there were limits on their ability to do that. The limited vocabulary of Old English meant that it was sometimes easier to just borrow the Latin word directly without translation. Occasionally, a Latin word was translated into Old English for a while, but that English word eventually died out, and at some point it was decided to just go back and use the original Latin word. So let's take a closer look at some of those Latin words which began to enter the English language during this period. So these are some of the oldest Latin words in English. And let me begin by noting that a few Latin terms related to Christianity had been borrowed by the ancestors of the Anglo Saxons when they were still back on the continent. Words like church and bishop had been borrowed during those earlier times, but words like that were very much the exception rather than the rule. Initially, Old English had very few Latin words, and the Anglo Saxons apparently liked it that way. But over time, the heavy influence of the Church overcame those language barriers. And to illustrate that process, let's go back to the last episode and the Ruth Bowl Cross inscription. As we saw, the Anglo Saxons didn't use the word cross at first. They preferred to use their own native word, rude R o O D. Cross is a Latin word, and it doesn't appear in English text until the middle 800s, well over a century after the Ruth Bowl Cross inscription. So at some point, the Latin term overcame and replaced the English term. So why did that happen? Well, part of the answer may actually have to do with the Vikings. The original Latin word was crux, Crux, and the original Irish missionaries used that word. But in Ireland, it evolved into CROs c r o s, and the Irish missionaries brought that version of the word with them to Northern Britain. And even though it was used in the Church Latin spoken in the Northumbrian monasteries, it didn't transfer over to English at the time. But about a century later, the Viking invasions began. And interestingly, the Vikings had picked up that Latin word crux from the Latin speakers on the continent. And I say interestingly because the Vikings weren't actually Christians, they were Germanic pagans. But for some reason, this word had filtered into their vocabulary anyway, and they brought that word with them as kros, typically spelled Kross. And many of the Viking invaders settled in northern and eastern Britain in the area which became known as the Danelaw. And it was really after that point that the word cross began to appear in English writings. So the Old Norse speakers living in Britain may have provided the transition from Latin to English, at least for this particular word. As we'll see in an upcoming episode, a lot of Old Norse words began to filter into English around this time. And since the word cross appeared in both Old Norse and Old Irish, it was one of those words which got picked up and came in as well. Cross is a good example of how a word originally came in as a religious term, but then expanded over time to become a very generic word. As often happens in English, the noun became a verb. When Christians made the sign of the cross on their chest, that process became the verb to cross. And the first use of the word cross in this manner is first documented in the 1200s. And from there, a couple of centuries later, it came to mean the process of moving over a particular point or line. So when did the chicken cross the road? Well, sometime after the year 1400 or so, because that was the first period in which the word cross was used in this general sense to mean pass over or traverse. It also gave us a preposition to describe this process across. Of course, this more general sense of the word then gave us new noun forms. So today we have words like crossing and crossroads to mean a point of passing over or traversing. And it later produced words like crossbow, cross stitch, cross section, cross word, and so on. So if the Latin word cross had not entered English, we wouldn't have crossword puzzles today. We would have rude word puzzles, which actually sounds kind of intriguing in its own way. We also eventually got the word crisscross, but this word didn't come from the later generic sense of the word cross. It actually came directly from the original Christian sense of the word. In fact, criss cross was originally Christ cross, and it actually has an interesting etymology related to medieval education. And since that's one of the themes of this episode, let's look at that history in the late Middle Ages. So during the period of Middle English and Early Modern English education was still very basic in Britain and most of Europe. Students learned reading, writing and math, and standard textbooks were used to teach those subjects. A common textbook used during that period contained the basic numbers, a few spelling words, the Alphabet, and the Lord's Prayer. The Alphabet was written in a single line, and above the letters was a cross. The cross stood for the phrase Christ cross me speed, which meant, may Christ cross give me success. And each student was expected to recite that phrase before reciting the Alphabet. So a student would say, christ cross me speed, A, b, c, D, and so on. Well, the line of letters below the cross came to be called the Christ cross row or crease cross row in Middle English. Over time, crease cross row became criss cross row. And by the 1600s, Criss Cross was actually a synonym for the Alphabet itself. The word then passed into ordinary English, but the original meaning of the word was lost on later generations. As education advanced and as new textbooks appeared, people forgot that the term criss cross referred to the Alphabet. And since the word cross was in general use by that point, the word criss cross was simply appropriated as a general term for cross or crossing action. So today, cross and criss cross have very similar meanings, but criss cross implies multiple intersections instead of the single intersection of a traditional cross. So the many streets of a city are said to criss cross. And if you play tic tac toe, you play on a criss cross pattern. But again, the sense of the word is completely changed from its original meaning as a line of letters, largely because speakers forgot the original etymology of the word. By the way, the original Latin version of the word crux gives us lots of other words. Thanks to later borrowings, it gives us crusade, crucify, and crucifix from French. Directly from Latin, it gives us the word excruciate, which is derived from the torture experienced during crucifixion. As you probably know, lots of medical terms are derived from Latin. So in medicine, the ligaments of the knee cross over each other, and these crossing ligaments are called cruciate ligaments from that same word. And even if you're not a doctor or nurse, you probably have heard of knee problems like an ACL tear. Well, acl is the anterior cruciate ligament, and it refers to one of the main crossing or cross cruciate ligaments in the knee. Another borrowing directly from Latin is the word crucial, meaning decisive or critical. So when you reach a proverbial fork in the road or crossroads, you have to make a crucial decision as to which way to go. We can actually pinpoint exactly when the use of the word crucial began. In the 1600s, Francis Bacon used the term instantius crucis in one of his texts on philosophy. He wrote in Latin, so he used that particular Latin phrase. And he used a term to describe a situation in which only one theory among many would hold true. So it was akin to that crossroads or fork in the road where one option was correct and all the others were wrong. And from this original usage, the word crucial developed as an English word to describe the decisive or critical point in an event. And in previous episodes, I've mentioned that English borrowed a lot of sailing and nautical terms from the Dutch, who the English traded with and sometimes fought against. Well, the Dutch language had borrowed the same Latin word crux, and they used it to describe the back and forth action of a ship as it crosses from one side of an ocean or a lake to the other. And that process became the word cruise. So, as you can see, this Latin word for an instrument used to punish and torture people generated a lot of words in modern English. But I wanted to start with this example because it really illustrates the relationship between Latin and English. At first, the word was rejected by the Anglo Saxons, who preferred their own native word, rude. But the combination of Irish missionaries and Viking invaders finally forced the word into the English language. Once it was there, it expanded and grew over time to create lots of new words. And then the Normans brought their French version of the original Latin word, and that produced even more words in English. And then after the Renaissance, the original Latin word was borrowed again and produced more new words. And then another form of the original Latin word was borrowed from Dutch, and that gave us another new word. And in a nutshell, that's really the history of Latin and English. Once those first Latin words finally broke through the English dam, which was keeping foreign words out, the dam was broken, and all of those Latin words began to flood into the English language. And that process occurred over many centuries. In addition to cross, many other Latin words related to Christianity entered English after the Church arrived in Britain a short time later, words like nun and abbot can be found in Old English texts. Another very early borrowing was the original version of our modern word master. The Latin word was magister. And it was one of those words which was borrowed multiple times. When it was borrowed a second time after the Normans, it gave us the word magistrate. And when the word was first borrowed by the Anglo Saxons, it still had that g sound in the middle. And as We've seen before, the G sound shifted to a Y sound in a lot of Old English words. So magister became majester and later shortened simply to master. Other early borrowings from church Latin included words like preach, priest, deacon, apostle, pope, disciple, temple, creed, shrine, psalm, P, S, a L, M, hymn, martyr, altar, and sabbath. The very common word offer was also taken in during this period. Offer originally had a religious sense. It meant to present something in worship, and it eventually passed into general use. Another Latin word borrowed from the early church was the word candle. But what about the large candle holder that held multiple candles? Well, the Latin word was candelabrum or candelabra, but the Anglo Saxons didn't borrow that word. Instead, they chose to use a native English construction. They combined the Latin word candle with the English word tree to produce the Old English compound word candle trail, literally candle, tree. But candle itself was a Latin word and it passed into general use around this time. The early Anglo Saxons also borrowed the word angel from church Latin. Originally, the word was angel. But after the Norman Conquest, the word re entered the language and the modern pronunciation with the soft g evolved. After the French influence of the Middle English period, the Romans had borrowed the word angel from the Greeks. In fact, many of these Latin terms associated with Christianity originated within Greek, specifically the original Greek version of the Bible. Within Greek, the original version of the word angel meant a messenger. The Anglo Saxons actually came up with a native English way of expressing the same idea of a messenger of God. They created an Old English compound word, erengast, which was literally errand, ghost or errand spirit, a spirit which runs errands. And that word was commonly used during the Old English period. But the French influence after the Normans ultimately meant that angel replaced ehrengost. Early Christianity also gave us the Latin word mass, which was the central act of worship in the Catholic Church. The Latin word had been used by the Romans to translate the Greek word eucharista for the service commemorating the Last Supper and the consecrated bread and wine. And that original Greek word still survives in English as Eucharist. But let's focus on the Latin translation of that word, the word mass. Mass is the modern English form of the word, but the original Latin word was missa, and it meant to send away. And we can still see that Latin root in words like dismiss and dismissal. At the end of the eucharistic service, there was always a formal dismissal, which was expressed with the words ita misa est, which meant go. It is the dismissal. And that concluding phrase, especially the Word misa, meaning dismissal, ultimately became the name of the service, mass. But there's another aspect of that word misa, which was important in the name of the service. When everyone was dismissed, they were free to go out and spread the message which had been given to them, and that became their mission, another word derived from the word misa. So we have to think of mass in relation to both being dismissed and pursuing a mission, both of those words being cognate. Interestingly, we can see the initial Anglo Saxon reluctance to borrow foreign words in an Old English translation of the word mass, which is used in a few texts, but apparently never really caught on. The Old English translation was senness, which was literally sendness, to send someone away, send being a native English word. The past participle of misa also gave us a couple of other words in English. Since misa meant to send or dismiss, the past participle meant something that had been sent or put in place, and it came to refer to a place setting for a meal, and from there it came to mean the meal itself. And that produced the word mess, as in mess hall. And communal eating tended to be very disorganized and sometimes dirty. In other words, it was messy. Another word derived from the word mess, meaning meal. So don't make it your mission to make a mess in the mess hall, otherwise you'll be dismissed. All of those key words being cognate, thanks to the same Latin root word, and all being cognate with the word mass, which came into English at this early point. In Old English, you might remember that words like monk and monastery came from the original Greek word monos, meaning alone. And from there those words passed into Latin. And just as the word monk entered Old English very early on, so did the word monastery. But in Old English it was usually rendered as minster, and we still see it in a name like Westminster. By the way, words like minister and ministry are derived from completely different Latin words and and are linguistically unrelated to minster and monastery. Another Latin word which entered English shortly after the arrival of the church was the word noon. And it also has an interesting etymology. The word noon is actually derived from the number nine, specifically the Latin word nona, which meant nine in Latin. And it's actually cognate with the English word nine, thanks to common Indo European roots. But I know what you're saying. Noon isn't 9:00, it's 12:00. So what happened? Well, for the answer, we have to go back to early Roman Christianity and the way time was kept before modern mechanical clocks were invented, Way back in episode 18, I discussed Roman concepts of time. And you might remember that sundials were once used. Each period from sunrise to sunset was divided into 12 equal segments. And those segments were indicated by markings on the sundial. And that also meant that the length of each hour was 1 12th of the daylight. So an hour was longer in the summer months and shorter in the winter months. Well, the first hour of sunlight was the first hour and the last hour of sunlight was the twelfth hour. And you might remember from episode 18 that we got the phrase the eleventh hour from that time keeping method. The eleventh hour was the next to last hour of the day. So it was the point near the end of the day when things needed to be wrapped up while there was still some sunlight left. So all of that means that the middle of the day, the point at which the sun was at its peak, was the sixth hour, halfway through the 12 hour day. But throughout the day there were a series of prayers which were conducted at specific times. And one set of those prayers were held in the middle of the afternoon at the ninth hour. So around 3:00 in the afternoon, using modern timekeeping methods. So this was the ninth hour and it was called the nona ora in Latin. And those particular prayers were called the nonus. And this time of day, the middle of the afternoon, was called non in Old English. And this was the old English version of the word noon. So in Old English it had the same meaning as Latin, around 3pm, the ninth hour. But in the 1100s, shortly after the Normans arrived, the church shifted those so called noon prayers up about three hours from the middle of the afternoon to the middle of the day. And with the move of prayer time, the word noon moved with it. And from that point on, noon has been associated with the middle of the day, 12pm using the modern timekeeping methods. So noon was another term which originated within the church and eventually passed into general use. Another church related word which passed from the original Greek through Latin into English was the word canon, not the weapon, but the word which originally meant church law and today refers to any set of rules which are generally accepted. The original sense of the word as church law meant a set of righteous rules, what one must do to live a straight life without deviation into sin or immorality. And that sense of straightness can be seen in the other version of the word canon. C A N N O N the weapon. That version of the word arrived after the Normans and it also derives from the same Greek root word which produced the other version of canon. The original Greek word was cana, and it meant a straight reed. So the sense of the word as straight gave us canon, C a n o n. And the sense of the word as read ultimately led to its meaning as tube in Latin. And that led to the word cannon, C a n, n o n, meaning a large tube used for firing projectiles. By the way, the original Greek word kana also produced another common English word, the word cane, which was a specific type of reed. One final word which entered Old English from Church Latin was ark, both in the sense of Noah's ark and in the sense of the ark of the covenant. In Latin, arca meant a large box or chest. So we see that in the sense of a large box shaped boat, and in the sense of a box which contained the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, that same Latin word arca came to refer to things hidden or concealed within a box, and that ultimately produced the word arcane. By the way, speaking of storage boxes, I should note that both the words box and chest, as in storage box, also pass from Latin to English around this same time. So that suggests that all those church monks were using a lot of boxes, maybe because they were moving around so much. So that's an overview of the primary words which passed from Church Latin into Old English shortly after the Church arrived. And as you can see, many of those words passed into general use over time. This was also the same time in which the Latin names of the months began to enter English for the first time. Now, this transition didn't really become complete until the Normans arrived, but the Church was using the Latin versions of the names in Britain before 1066. So the natives were aware of the alternate names, and that probably allowed the Latin versions to replace the native English versions very quickly after the Normans arrived. With the spread of the Church throughout Anglo Saxon Britain, there was a corresponding spread of support personnel who spoke Latin, and that led to a general spread of Latin throughout the island. And as I noted earlier, once the Anglo Saxons began to borrow Church related Latin terms, the barrier to those foreign words was broken. And soon more and more Latin words were beginning to appear in Old English, and many of those words were for general use. So, for example, the Christian missionaries brought an advanced culture, and that included new technologies derived from the late Roman civilization. And since these were new technologies, their Latin names began to appear within English. So a word like mill, as in watermill, began to appear. Also, words like tower, sickle, and fork came into Old English fork was originally used in the sense of a pitchfork, not as an eating utensil. Now, it's not a very sophisticated technology, but the word mat in the sense of a sleeping cushion also came into English from Latin during this period. Another new technology was plaster, and that word also entered English around this time. Plaster served many purposes. It was used for building and construction, and it was also used for medical purposes in early versions of castes. In fact, the arrival of Latin speakers from the continent meant that there were lots of new methods of diagnosing and treating sickness. And monasteries actually became de facto hospitals for treating the injured and the sick. Terms like cancer and fever entered English from Latin during this period, as did the word sponge, which was a common tool used when treating sick people. And the word strap also came in. It was originally used in the sense of a leather strap used to sharpen knives or razors. Those Christian missionaries also brought new types of clothing. Words like cap, sock, and silk came in. Purple dye had been common in the Mediterranean since the Phoenicians, and purple fabrics had spread to Rome and then to the church. So, not surprisingly, the word purple entered English during this early period as well. And all of those new arrivals from the continent brought knowledge of new plants and animals, and they brought knowledge of how to cook and prepare new foods. So a word for cabbage came into English, but it wasn't cabbage. It was cowl. And that ultimately gives us the word cole, as in coleslaw, and it gives us the word kale. That Latin root also passed through in the word cauliflower, as well as the first part of the word collard. But again, cabbage came from a different root word after the Normans arrived. In fact, it came from a Latin root word we've seen before, the word copet, meaning head. So when we speak of a head of cabbage, we're actually being redundant, because head is a native Old English word, and coppet is the Latin equivalent from the same Indo European root. And Latin coppet gave us cabbage. Other new words for vegetables and plants include beet, radish, fennel, periwinkle, and aloe. Old English also borrowed a word for a specific plant used for flavoring. The word was originally ginkafir, but after the Normans, Those hard Germanic GS became soft French GS and Gingifer became ginger. And the word pear also appeared in English during the Old English period, all of those words being borrowed from Latin. And speaking of foods and seasonings, an incredibly common English word like cook arrived in Old English from Latin during this early period. And all of this suggests that the new monastery culture brought new types of cooking and food preparation. Back when we were looking at the Germanic tribes on the continent, I mentioned that one of the Latin words which entered the early Common Germanic language was the Latin word for the place where meals are prepared. That place was coquina in the original common West Germanic language. But in English, that hard K sound in the middle shifted to the newer ch sound. So coquina became cochina and then kitchen over time. Well, if we go back to that original form of the word coquina, we can see and hear the connection to the modern word cook. Cook and coquina come from the same Latin root. So when you cook in your kitchen, you're just using two different forms of the same Latin root word. And speaking of foods, new Latin words like lobster and muscle also came into Old English during this early period. Lobster is actually derived from the same Latin word which produced the word locust. The new language also introduced knowledge of new plants. Words like balsam, cedar, cypress, pine and lily came into English during the same period. The word mallow for a specific kind of plant also came in. One version of the mallow plant was the marsh mallow. In Old English, the word was meershmaelwa. And that ultimately gave English the word marshmallow, which, believe it or not, is a very old word which has been in English since the Anglo Saxons, thanks to Latin. And speaking of plants, I should note that the word plant was also borrowed from Latin during this same period. Now being a Mediterranean language, Latin also brought words for animals that weren't native to the British Isles. So the word camel came into English during this period. But the Anglo Saxons apparently weren't sure what a camel was. They actually created another word for camel from Latin. That word was ulthaned, which is cognate with the word elephant, which came into English after the Normans. But the fact that olthaned was derived from the same word as elephant suggests that the Anglo Saxons only had a vague sense of those African animals. Another word for an African animal which came in during this period was the word tiger. By the way, English already had a word for lion, the word or leo, as we would pronounce it today. That word was borrowed from Latin by the Germanic tribes back on the continent, and it had passed into Old English. Lion is a later French version of the word pronounced Lyon, and that version came in after the Normans. So leo is the version which actually precedes Old English, and lion is the version which came after Old English. But again, tiger was borrowed at this point during the period of Old English. The word phoenix also came in during this period. It was borrowed from Latin, but that ph at the beginning is a giveaway that it was originally a Greek word. So, as you can see, Latin words began to infiltrate English very early on, long before the Normans arrived. All in all, scholars have estimated that more than 400 words were borrowed from Latin during the Old English period. But many of those words eventually disappeared from English. So it's believed that many of those Latin words were actually rarely used by the Anglo Saxons. At first, sometimes a Latin word was borrowed and disappeared, but then the word was borrowed again after the Normans arrived. That's what happened with words like sign and giant, which were first borrowed during the Old English period as stechen and gigant, but soon disappeared. Then, after 1066, they were reborrowed in their more modern forms from Old French. Out of those 400 or so total Latin words, the vast majority disappeared altogether. But about 100 of them survived, and they permanently entered the English language during this period, including the ones we've looked at so far. And those words have been amazingly resilient because they're still quite common today, over a thousand years later. Some other common English words that were borrowed from Latin during this period include port, prime, false place, turn, crisp, which originally meant curly, and palm, as in the part of the hand. As education and scholarship expanded in places like Northumbria, the religious schools within those monasteries used those Latin words on a daily basis. And not surprisingly, many new Latin words were borrowed in relation to scholarship and education. So a Latin word like philosopher came in during the Anglo Saxon period, as did the words school and scholar, again all ultimately from Greek. And the increasing literacy of the Anglo Saxons is reflected in the many new Latin words related to writing. The word verse was originally used in relation to the Bible, but it soon took on a more general sense as part of a poem. The related word meter also entered English. The word title came in as well, as did the first use of the word grammar in English. The Latin word notary, meaning a scribe, was also used within those monastic schools. But that word was often translated with a native Old English word, mertra, which was literally marker one who marks. And the Latin word manual for a type of instruction book was based on the Latin word for hand, which was manus. Rather than borrow the word manual, the first Anglo Saxons effected a literal translation into English, which was handbook, an English compound word which still exists, but manual eventually found its way in and became a synonym for handbook. As we've seen, the education offered in those early monastic schools was based on the traditional Roman model. So it included a very basic course in geometry. And from there the word circle came into English. During this early period, with the teaching of arithmetic and geometry, new precise forms of measurement were required. As we've seen before, the Germanic tribes back on the continent had borrowed words like mile and pound from Latin long before the Anglo Saxons settled in Britain. And words like yard and foot were native English words used for measurements. Now, the Anglo Saxons borrowed the Latin word inch. It meant one twelfth in Latin because the Romans sometimes measured in increments of 12, as we saw earlier when measuring the daylight. A 1 12th increment was an uncia in Latin. The Anglo Saxons borrowed the term as juncha, and they applied it to the English measurement of a foot. So inche or inch became 1 12th of a foot. And thanks to courses in music, the word cymbal came in, as did the word organ, which was originally a general term for a musical instrument. The Latin word pipe also came in. Pipe was originally a term for a wind instrument, and the related word piper also came in. The word anthem was also borrowed during this period. Anthem originally had a religious connotation referring to a song set to sacred music. But again, it's passed into general use over time. So with that, we've actually looked at most of the words in modern English which came in from Latin during the Anglo Saxon period. So these are some of the oldest Latin words in English. And as I've noted before, many of these Latin words are directly related to the growth of monasteries in the 600-00 and-7-00. And going forward, we're going to move the story away from those monasteries. But before I conclude this episode, I have one more anecdote related to those monasteries in Northumbria, which I wanted to share with you. And it also relates to English. I noted earlier that when the Northumbrian King Oswy died, he was succeeded by his son Egfrith. Egfrith was the king that commissioned Benedict Bishop to build that twin monastery as Monk Wermuth and Jarrow, where Bede lived. Well, King Agfreth's wife was a princess from East Anglia named Aethelthrith, and she came to be known in later Catholic literature as Ethelreda. And that's the version of her name which I'm going to use here because, frankly, it's easier to pronounce. Now, it's important to note that Ethelreda's marriage to Egfrith was another one of those political marriages. Her father was the King of East Anglia, so their marriage had been arranged as part of a marriage alliance between the two kingdoms. So apparently there was never much of a personal relationship there. In fact, Bede tells us that the marriage was never consummated, which is actually kind of important, because when Ecfreth became king after his father died, Ethelreda didn't have any desire to continue as the Queen of Northumbria. So she actually decided to renounce her husband and her royal position to become a nun. Bede tells us that her husband, the king, was not happy with this development, and he actually tried to force her back into the marriage. So she fled to the Isle of Ely, near Cambridge in eastern Britain. Eventually, the king accepted the situation and Ethelredo was permitted to retire in Ely. And having settled there, she decided to establish a monastery in the year673, and she actually became the abbess of the monastery. But late in her life, she acquired a tumor in her throat. And as a devout nun, she felt that her throat condition was a judgment or punishment from God for her previous life as a princess and briefly as a queen. As a princess, she loved to wear necklaces in the manner of a proper royal, and she felt that this neck tumor, which happened to be located in the same place where she had once worn necklaces, was God's divine punishment. She eventually died from the affliction, and after her death, she was heralded for having given up the life of a queen to become a nun and an abbess. So she soon became Saint Ethelreda, and over time, she became known simply as Saint Audrey. And her monastery in Ely became the source of many pilgrimages. After a few years, an annual fair was held there in her honor. And like many fairs in the Middle Ages, a lot of cheap trinkets and jewelry were made and sold there. And a specific type of necklace made from lace was also sold. In fact, the word necklace is actually a compound word, neck plus lace, literally lace worn around the neck. And this particular type of neck lace sold at those fairs was called St Audrey's lace. But over time, St Audrey's lace became Tawdry's lace, and eventually the term tawdry became associated with all of the lace, necklaces and other trinkets sold at those types of fairs. By the 1600s, the Puritans were very prominent in England, and they rejected any type of fancy dress, including lacework. So thanks to the Puritans, the word tawdry became a negative word for any type of trinkets or lacework, especially lace necklaces, which, again, is kind of redundant. Lace necklace. Anyway, the negative connotation imposed by the Puritans resulted in the modern sense of the word tawdry as something cheap, showy or gaudy. And ironically, it was the puritans who turned St Audrey's name from something divine to something cheap and negative. Believe it or not, there's also another connection between neck diseases, Christianity, Latin and English. This bit of history actually comes from the later Middle English period, but given the parallels, this seems like a good time to bring it up. In the Middle Ages, there was a common type of tuberculosis which affected the lymph nodes in the neck region. Called scrofula. It was most common in children and was usually spread by unpasteurized milk from infected cows. Some people thought that a king's touch would cure the condition, so it was sometimes called the king's evil. Of course, kings usually had more important things to do than walk around rubbing sick people's necks. So those sick people looked for an alternative, and what they decided to do instead was use one of the king's coins, and they just rubbed the coin on the affected area. They actually preferred a specific coin which was minted with an image of the Archangel Michael standing over and slaying a dragon. This coin was often called the angel noble in English because the coin featured the Archangel Michael. Remember, angel is one of those Latin words which goes back to the Old English period. Well, the process of rubbing the angel noble coin on the affected area of the neck ultimately led to the phrase touched by an angel. So that phrase doesn't actually mean touched by an angel in the religious sense. It actually refers to a purported medical cure derived from a king's touch. So, as you can see, the intersection of English and Latin sometimes produces some surprising results. But despite some of the strange etymologies, Latin gave English something it desperately needed if it wanted to become a great literary language. It gave English an enhanced vocabulary, and it gave English the ability to express nuance and subtlety. These new Latin words were combined with new English translations of Latin words. And English was always creating new words by compounding, putting two or more words together to create a new word together. All of these new words and influences gave Old English the ability to express abstract thoughts in a way that wasn't really possible before. And this development was somewhat unique to English. It wasn't really happening in the same way within the other Germanic languages. From this point on, the English word stock continued to grow, and it was increasingly capable of expressing subtleties of thought that was only surpassed by Latin in Europe. And in the process, English was starting to take its place behind Latin as the second great literary language of Europe. And as we move into the second half of the Anglo Saxon period, we'll see English begin to distinguish itself outside of Latin. English literature will be unrivaled in Europe over the next three centuries. Even a very expressive and important language like French won't emerge as a literary language until after the Norman conquest of Britain. So next time, we'll continue to move the story forward. We'll look closer at how the Anglo Saxons created new words, specifically how they used compound words. And we'll begin to explore the emergence of English as a literary language. And we'll see how that influence spread beyond the shores of Britain to continental Europe. So until next time, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast.