Word and term origins

2.
Etymological characteristics of the English vocabulary.

Etymology
is
a branch of Linguistics studying the origin of words, their change
and development,
the linguistic and extralinguistic forces modifying their structure,
meaning and
usage. The term «etymology»
is
derived from the Greek word «etymon»
which
means «the true, original meaning of a word».

According
to the etymological principle the English vocabulary is usually
divided into
2 uneven classes:

• native
  words, which make up about 30% of the English vocabulary;

• borrowed
  words which make up about 70% of the English vocabulary.

Native
words are
words which belong to the original word-stock (словарный
запас).

Words
adopted from foreign languages are known as borrowed
words, loan words, or
borrowings.

Though
native words constitute only about 30% of the English vocabulary,
they make up
the greatest part of the basic word-stock in English (основной
словарный
фонд
языка).

The
basic
word-stock is
the stable stock of the most frequently used 3 or 4 thousand words
which constitute the core of the vocabulary preserving the national
peculiarities of the
language. The changes in the basic word-stock are very slow and are
not easily perceptible.

Native
words have a higher frequency value than most of the borrowings. They
occur in
any spoken or written speech forming the «foundation and
framework of the English language»
(Кунин).

Words
of native origin include most of the conjunctions, numerals,
prepositions, pronouns
and strong verbs. The definite and indefinite articles are also of
native origin.

The
native element in modern English is mostly monosyllabic. But as for
their meanings, native words in English are polysemantic. They show
great word-building power
and make up the majority of set-expressions and proverbs.

E.g.
«milk»:
«milky», «milkman», «to milk»,
«milk-white», «There’s no use crying over
spilt milk»;

«water»:
«to water», «watery», «waterfair,
«waterproof, «Blood is thicker than water»

(Свой
своего
не
обидит).

According
to their origin native
words
may be divided into 3 groups:

• Indo-European;

• Common-Germanic;

• English
  words proper.

1) Native
words of the Indo-European
origin
are the oldest. They have correlated words
in
IE languages: Romanic, Slavonic, Germanic, and even in Sanskrit, the
ancient language
of
India. Here belong such words as:

-father,
mother, son, brother, daughter;

• bull,
  wolf, goose, cow;

• nose,
  heart, foot;

• to
  stand, to sit, to be, to eat, to know;

• quick,
  slow, red, new, glad, sad;

• one,
  two, …,
  hundred;

• tree,
  birch, corn;

• pronouns
  (except «they «);

• sun,
  moon; day, night.

E.g.
The native English word «mother»
(OE
«moder»)
has
correlated words in Icelandic —mothir,
in
German — Mutter,
in
Russian — мать,
in
Latin — mater,
in
Greek — meter,
in
Sanskrit
— matr.

2) Native
words of the Common-Germanic
stock
have conelated words/parallels in the
languages
of the Germanic group only: in German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian,
Icelandic,
etc.,
but not in Russian, French or Italian They constitute a larger part
of the native words
in English Here belong such words as:

• head,
  hand, arm, finger, bone;

• summer,
  winter, spring (not «autumn «);

• storm,
  rain, ice, frost;

• oak,
  fir, grass;

• bear,
fox, calf;

• house,
  bench, room, ship, boat;

• sea,
  land; life, hope;

• hat,
  shoe;

• to
go, to tell, to speak, to say, to answer, to see, to hear, to drink,
to sing, to make, to
learn,
to have;

• broad,
  green, gray, blue, dead, small, thick, high, old, good;

• all,
  each, self, such, he, here, there, near, etc.

E.g.
the native English word «hand’
(OE
«hand»)
has
correlated words in Dutch — hand,
in
German
— Hand,
in
Icelandic — hind,
but
no parallels in the languages outside the Germanic
group.

3)
The third group of native words is represented by the so-called
English
words proper, or
specifically English words, which have no cognates (words of the same
etymological root,
родственное
слово)
in other languages. They are: — boy,
girl, lord, lady, woman, bird, always, daisy.

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The etymology of a word refers to its origin and historical development: that is, its earliest known use, its transmission from one language to another, and its changes in form and meaning. Etymology is also the term for the branch of linguistics that studies word histories.

What’s the Difference Between a Definition and an Etymology?

A definition tells us what a word means and how it’s used in our own time. An etymology tells us where a word came from (often, but not always, from another language) and what it used to mean.

For example, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the definition of the word disaster is «an occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe» or «a grave misfortune.» But the etymology of the word disaster takes us back to a time when people commonly blamed great misfortunes on the influence of the stars.

Disaster first appeared in English in the late 16th century, just in time for Shakespeare to use the word in the play King Lear. It arrived by way of the Old Italian word disastro, which meant «unfavorable to one’s stars.»

This older, astrological sense of disaster becomes easier to understand when we study its Latin root word, astrum, which also appears in our modern «star» word astronomy. With the negative Latin prefix dis- («apart») added to astrum («star»), the word (in Latin, Old Italian, and Middle French) conveyed the idea that a catastrophe could be traced to the «evil influence of a star or planet» (a definition that the dictionary tells us is now «obsolete»).

Is the Etymology of a Word Its True Definition?

Not at all, though people sometimes try to make this argument. The word etymology is derived from the Greek word etymon, which means «the true sense of a word.» But in fact the original meaning of a word is often different from its contemporary definition.

The meanings of many words have changed over time, and older senses of a word may grow uncommon or disappear entirely from everyday use. Disaster, for instance, no longer means the «evil influence of a star or planet,» just as consider no longer means «to observe the stars.»

Let’s look at another example. Our English word salary is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as «fixed compensation for services, paid to a person on a regular basis.» Its etymology can be traced back 2,000 years to sal, the Latin word for salt. So what’s the connection between salt and salary?

The Roman historian Pliny the Elder tells us that «in Rome, a soldier was paid in salt,» which back then was widely used as a food preservative. Eventually, this salarium came to signify a stipend paid in any form, usually money. Even today the expression «worth your salt» indicates that you’re working hard and earning your salary. However, this doesn’t mean that salt is the true definition of salary.

Where Do Words Come From?

New words have entered (and continue to enter) the English language in many different ways. Here are some of the most common methods.

• Borrowing
  The majority of the words used in modern English have been borrowed from other languages. Although most of our vocabulary comes from Latin and Greek (often by way of other European languages), English has borrowed words from more than 300 different languages around the world. Here are just a few examples:
  futon (from the Japanese word for «bedclothes, bedding»)
• hamster (Middle High German hamastra)
• kangaroo (Aboriginal language of Guugu Yimidhirr, gangurru , referring to a species of kangaroo)
• kink (Dutch, «twist in a rope»)
• moccasin (Native American Indian, Virginia Algonquian, akin to Powhatan mäkäsn and Ojibwa makisin)
• molasses (Portuguese melaços, from Late Latin mellceum, from Latin mel, «honey»)
• muscle (Latin musculus, «mouse»)
• slogan (alteration of Scots slogorne, «battle cry»)
• smorgasbord (Swedish, literally «bread and butter table»)
• whiskey (Old Irish uisce, «water,» and bethad, «of life»)
• Clipping or Shortening
  Some new words are simply shortened forms of existing words, for instance indie from independent; exam from examination; flu from influenza, and fax from facsimile.
• Compounding
  A new word may also be created by combining two or more existing words: fire engine, for example, and babysitter.
• Blends
  A blend, also called a portmanteau word, is a word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two or more other words. Examples include moped, from mo(tor) + ped(al), and brunch, from br(eakfast) + (l)unch.
• Conversion or Functional Shift
  New words are often formed by changing an existing word from one part of speech to another. For example, innovations in technology have encouraged the transformation of the nouns network, Google, and microwave into verbs.
• Transfer of Proper Nouns
  Sometimes the names of people, places, and things become generalized vocabulary words. For instance, the noun maverick was derived from the name of an American cattleman, Samuel Augustus Maverick. The saxophone was named after Sax, the surname of a 19th-century Belgian family that made musical instruments.
• Neologisms or Creative Coinages
  Now and then, new products or processes inspire the creation of entirely new words. Such neologisms are usually short lived, never even making it into a dictionary. Nevertheless, some have endured, for example quark (coined by novelist James Joyce), galumph (Lewis Carroll), aspirin (originally a trademark), grok (Robert A. Heinlein).
• Imitation of Sounds
  Words are also created by onomatopoeia, naming things by imitating the sounds that are associated with them: boo, bow-wow, tinkle, click.

Why Should We Care About Word Histories?

If a word’s etymology is not the same as its definition, why should we care at all about word histories? Well, for one thing, understanding how words have developed can teach us a great deal about our cultural history. In addition, studying the histories of familiar words can help us deduce the meanings of unfamiliar words, thereby enriching our vocabularies. Finally, word stories are often both entertaining and thought provoking. In short, as any youngster can tell you, words are fun.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

«Etymologies» redirects here. For the work by Isidore of Seville, see Etymologiae.

Etymology ( ET-im-OL-ə-jee^[1]) is the study of the origin and evolution of a word’s semantic meaning across time, including its constituent morphemes and phonemes.^[2][3] It is a subfield of historical linguistics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, semiotics, and phonetics.

For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, and texts about the language, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form, or when and how they entered the language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about forms that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots in many European languages, for example, can be traced all the way back to the origin of the Indo-European language family.

Even though etymological research originated from the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian.

Etymology[edit]

The word etymology derives from the Greek word ἐτυμολογία (etumología), itself from ἔτυμον (étumon), meaning «true sense or sense of a truth», and the suffix -logia, denoting «the study of».^[4][5]

The term etymon refers to a word or morpheme (e.g., stem^[6] or root^[7]) from which a later word or morpheme derives. For example, the Latin word candidus, which means «white», is the etymon of English candid. Relationships are often less transparent, however. English place names such as Winchester, Gloucester, Tadcaster share in different modern forms a suffixed etymon that was once meaningful, Latin castrum ‘fort’.

Methods[edit]

Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words, some of which are:

• Philological research. Changes in the form and meaning of the word can be traced with the aid of older texts, if such are available.
• Making use of dialectological data. The form or meaning of the word might show variations between dialects, which may yield clues about its earlier history.
• The comparative method. By a systematic comparison of related languages, etymologists may often be able to detect which words derive from their common ancestor language and which were instead later borrowed from another language.
• The study of semantic change. Etymologists must often make hypotheses about changes in the meaning of particular words. Such hypotheses are tested against the general knowledge of semantic shifts. For example, the assumption of a particular change of meaning may be substantiated by showing that the same type of change has occurred in other languages as well.

Types of word origins[edit]

Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change, borrowing (i.e., the adoption of «loanwords» from other languages); word formation such as derivation and compounding; and onomatopoeia and sound symbolism (i.e., the creation of imitative words such as «click» or «grunt»).

While the origin of newly emerged words is often more or less transparent, it tends to become obscured through time due to sound change or semantic change. Due to sound change, it is not readily obvious that the English word set is related to the word sit (the former is originally a causative formation of the latter). It is even less obvious that bless is related to blood (the former was originally a derivative with the meaning «to mark with blood»).

Semantic change may also occur. For example, the English word bead originally meant «prayer». It acquired its modern meaning through the practice of counting the recitation of prayers by using beads.

History[edit]

The search for meaningful origins for familiar or strange words is far older than the modern understanding of linguistic evolution and the relationships of languages, which began no earlier than the 18th century. From Antiquity through the 17th century, from Pāṇini to Pindar to Sir Thomas Browne, etymology had been a form of witty wordplay, in which the supposed origins of words were creatively imagined to satisfy contemporary requirements; for example, the Greek poet Pindar (born in approximately 522 BCE) employed inventive etymologies to flatter his patrons. Plutarch employed etymologies insecurely based on fancied resemblances in sounds. Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae was an encyclopedic tracing of «first things» that remained uncritically in use in Europe until the sixteenth century. Etymologicum genuinum is a grammatical encyclopedia edited at Constantinople in the ninth century, one of several similar Byzantine works. The thirteenth-century Legenda Aurea, as written by Jacobus de Varagine, begins each vita of a saint with a fanciful excursus in the form of an etymology.^[8]

Ancient Sanskrit[edit]

The Sanskrit linguists and grammarians of ancient India were the first to make a comprehensive analysis of linguistics and etymology. The study of Sanskrit etymology has provided Western scholars with the basis of historical linguistics and modern etymology. Four of the most famous Sanskrit linguists are:

• Yaska (c. 6th–5th centuries BCE)
• Pāṇini (c. 520–460 BCE)
• Kātyāyana (6th-4th centuries BCE)
• Patañjali (2nd century BCE)

These linguists were not the earliest Sanskrit grammarians, however. They followed a line of ancient grammarians of Sanskrit who lived several centuries earlier like Sakatayana of whom very little is known. The earliest of attested etymologies can be found in Vedic literature in the philosophical explanations of the Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads.

The analyses of Sanskrit grammar done by the previously mentioned linguists involved extensive studies on the etymology (called Nirukta or Vyutpatti in Sanskrit) of Sanskrit words, because the ancient Indians considered sound and speech itself to be sacred and, for them, the words of the sacred Vedas contained deep encoding of the mysteries of the soul and God.

Ancient Greco-Roman[edit]

One of the earliest philosophical texts of the Classical Greek period to address etymology was the Socratic dialogue Cratylus (c. 360 BCE) by Plato. During much of the dialogue, Socrates makes guesses as to the origins of many words, including the names of the gods. In his Odes Pindar spins complimentary etymologies to flatter his patrons. Plutarch (Life of Numa Pompilius) spins an etymology for pontifex, while explicitly dismissing the obvious, and actual «bridge-builder»:

The priests, called Pontifices…. have the name of Pontifices from potens, powerful because they attend the service of the gods, who have power and command overall. Others make the word refer to exceptions of impossible cases; the priests were to perform all the duties possible; if anything lays beyond their power, the exception was not to be cavilled. The most common opinion is the most absurd, which derives this word from pons, and assigns the priests the title of bridge-makers. The sacrifices performed on the bridge were amongst the most sacred and ancient, and the keeping and repairing of the bridge attached, like any other public sacred office, to the priesthood.

Medieval[edit]

Isidore of Seville compiled a volume of etymologies to illuminate the triumph of religion. Each saint’s legend in Jacobus de Varagine’s Legenda Aurea begins with an etymological discourse on the saint’s name:

Lucy is said of light, and light is beauty in beholding, after that S. Ambrose saith: The nature of light is such, she is gracious in beholding, she spreadeth over all without lying down, she passeth in going right without crooking by right long line; and it is without dilation of tarrying, and therefore it is showed the blessed Lucy hath beauty of virginity without any corruption; essence of charity without disordinate love; rightful going and devotion to God, without squaring out of the way; right long line by continual work without negligence of slothful tarrying. In Lucy is said, the way of light.^[9]

Modern era[edit]

Etymology in the modern sense emerged in the late 18th-century European academia, within the context of the wider «Age of Enlightenment,» although preceded by 17th century pioneers such as Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, Gerardus Vossius, Stephen Skinner, Elisha Coles, and William Wotton. The first known systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of grammar and lexicon was made in 1770 by the Hungarian, János Sajnovics, when he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between Sami and Hungarian (work that was later extended to the whole Finno-Ugric language family in 1799 by his fellow countryman, Samuel Gyarmathi).^[10]

The origin of modern historical linguistics is often traced to Sir William Jones, a Welsh philologist living in India, who in 1782 observed the genetic relationship between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. Jones published his The Sanscrit Language in 1786, laying the foundation for the field of Indo-European linguistics.^[11]

The study of etymology in Germanic philology was introduced by Rasmus Christian Rask in the early 19th century and elevated to a high standard with the German Dictionary of the Brothers Grimm. The successes of the comparative approach culminated in the Neogrammarian school of the late 19th century. Still in the 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used etymological strategies (principally and most famously in On the Genealogy of Morals, but also elsewhere) to argue that moral values have definite historical (specifically, cultural) origins where modulations in meaning regarding certain concepts (such as «good» and «evil») show how these ideas had changed over time—according to which value-system appropriated them. This strategy gained popularity in the 20th century, and philosophers, such as Jacques Derrida, have used etymologies to indicate former meanings of words to de-center the «violent hierarchies» of Western philosophy.

Notable etymologists[edit]

• Ernest Klein (1899-1983), Hungarian-born Romanian-Canadian linguist, etymologist
• Marko Snoj (born 1959), Indo-Europeanist, Slavist, Albanologist, lexicographer, and etymologist
• Anatoly Liberman (born 1937), linguist, medievalist, etymologist, poet, translator of poetry and literary critic
• Michael Quinion (born c. 1943)

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Alfred Bammesberger. English Etymology. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984.
• Philip Durkin. «Etymology», in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edn. Ed. Keith Brown. Vol. 4. Oxford: Elsevier, 2006, pp. 260–7.
• Philip Durkin. The Oxford Guide to Etymology. Oxford/NY: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• William B. Lockwood. An Informal Introduction to English Etymology. Montreux, London: Minerva Press, 1995.
• Yakov Malkiel. Etymology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Alan S. C. Ross. Etymology, with a special reference to English. Fair Lawn, N.J.: Essential Books; London: Deutsch, 1958.
• Michael Samuels. Linguistic Evolution: With Special Reference to English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
• Bo Svensén. «Etymology», chap. 19 of A Handbook of Lexicography: The Theory and Practice of Dictionary-Making. Cambridge/NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Walther von Wartburg. Problems and Methods in Linguistics, rev. edn. with the collaboration of Stephen Ullmann. Trans. Joyce M. H. Reid. Oxford: Blackwell, 1969.

External links[edit]

• Media related to Etymology at Wikimedia Commons
• Etymology at Curlie.
• List of etymologies of words in 90+ languages.
• Online Etymology Dictionary.

Etymological Survey of the Modern English Language.
According to the origin, the word-stock may be subdivided into two main groups: one comprises the native elements; the other consists of the borrowed words.

Native Words
The term native denotes words which belong to the original English stock known from the earliest manuscripts of the Old English period. They are mostly words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles in the 5th century by Germanic tribes.
Linguists estimate the Anglo-Saxon stock of words as 25-30 per cent of the English vocabulary. The native word-stock includes the words of Indio-European origin and the words of Common Germanic origin. They belong to very important semantic groups.
The words of Indio-European origin (that is those having cognates in other I-E. languages) form the oldest layer. They fall into definite semantic groups:
terms of kinship: father, mother, son, daughter, brother;
words denoting the most important objects and phenomena of
nature: sun, moon, star, water, wood, hill, stone, tree;
names of animals and birds: bull, cat, crow, goose, wolf;
parts of human body: arm, eye, foot, heart;
the verbs: bear, come, sit, stand, etc;
the adjectives: hard, quick, slow, red, white.
Most numerals belong here.
The words of the Common Germanic stock, i.e. words having cognates in German, Norwegian, Dutch and other Germanic languages are more numerous. This part of the native vocabulary contains a great number of semantic groups. Examples:
the nouns are: summer, winter, storm, ice, rain, group, bridge,
house, shop, room, iron, lead, cloth, hat, shirt, shoe, care,
evil, hope, life, need, rest;
the verbs are: bake, burn, buy, drive hear, keep, learn, make, meet,
rise, see, send, shoot, etc;
the adjectives are: broad, dead, deaf, deep.
Many adverbs and pronouns belong to this layer, though small in number (25-30 per cent of the vocabulary).
The Common Germanic words and the verbs of the Common Indo-European stock form the bulk of the most frequent elements used in any style of speech. They constitute not less than 80 per cent of the most frequent words listed in E.L. Thorndike and I. Lorge`s dictionary “The Teacher`s Wordbook of 30,000 Words, N.Y.1959, p.268).
Investigation shows that the Anglo-Saxon words in Modern English must be considered very important due to the following characteristics. All of them belong to very important semantic groups. They include most of the auxiliary and modal verbs (shall, will, should, would, must, can, may, etc.), pronouns (I. he, you, his, who, whose, etc.), prepositions (in. out, on, under), numerals (one, two) and conjunctions (and, but). Notional words of native (Anglo-Saxon) origin include such groups as words denoting parts of the body, family, relations, natural phenomena and planets, animals, qualities and properties, common actions, etc.
Most of native words are polysemantic (man, head, go, etc.)
Most of them are stylistically neutral.
They possess wide lexical and grammatical valency, many of them enter a number of phraseological units.
Due to the great stability and semantic peculiarities the native words possess great word-building power.

Borrowings (Loan Words)
A borrowed (loan) word is a word adopted from another language and modified in sound form, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of English.
According to Otto Jespersen loan-words are “the milestones of philology, because in a great many instances they permit us to fix approximately the dates of linguistic changes”. But they may be termed “the milestones of general history” because they show the course of civilization and give valuable information as to the inner life of nations.
Through its history the English language came in contact with many languages and borrowed freely from them. The greatest influx of borrowings mainly came from Latin, French and Old Norse (Scandinavian). Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse and French (its Norman dialect) were the languages of the conquerors: the Scandinavians invaded the British Isles and merged with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century. After the Norman Conquest in 1066 Norman French was the language of the upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century.
Etymologically the English vocabulary is said to have a particularly mixed character. Therefore some linguists (L.P.Smith, I.H.Bradley) consider foreign influence to be the most important factor in the history of English. Other linguists (Ch.Hockett, J.A.Sheard) and our linguists, on the contrary, point out the stability of the grammar and phonetic system of the English Language and consider it necessary to examine the volume and role and the comparative importance of native and borrowed elements in the development of the English vocabulary.
The greatest number of borrowings has come from French. Borrowed words refer to various fields of social-political, scientific and cultural life. About 41 per cent of them are scientific and technical terms.
L.P.Smith calls English «half-sister» to the Romance languages.
The number and character of borrowings depend on many factors: on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts and also on the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The closer the language the deeper and more versatile is the influence. Thus, from the Scandinavian languages, which were closely related to Old Eng¬lish, some classes of words were borrowed that could not have been adopted from non-related or distantly related languages: the personal pro¬nouns: they, their, them; also same, till, though, fro (adv).
Sometimes words were borrowed to fill in gaps in the vocabulary. Thus, the English borrowed Latin, Greek, Spanish words paper, tomato, potato when these vegetables were first brought to England and because the English vocabulary lacked words for denoting these new objects.
Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech and through written speech. Oral borrowings took place chiefly in the early periods of history, in recent times, written borrowings did. Words borrowed orally (L. Street, mill, inch) are usually short and undergo more changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings (e.g. French communi¬que, belles-letres, naivete) preserve their spelling, they are often rather long and their assimilation is a long process.
The terms «source of borrowing» and «origin of borrowing» should be distinguished. The first denotes the language from which the loan was taken into English. The second denotes the language to which the word may be traced:
E.g. paper

Words like paper, pepper, etc. are often called by specialists in the history of the language «much-travelled words» which came into English passing through several other languages and not by means of direct bor¬rowing.
Though the borrowed words always undergo changes in the proc-ess of borrowing, some of them preserve their former characteristics for a long period. This enables us to recognize them as the borrowed element. Examples are:
the initial position of the sounds [v], [d], [z] is a sign that the word is not native: vacuum (Lat), valley (FR.), volcano (Ital.), vanilla(Sp.), etc;
may be rendered by «g» and «j» gem (Lat), gemma, jewel (O. Fr.), jungle (Hindi), gesture (Lat), giant (O.Fr.), genre, gendarme (Fr.);
the initial position of the letters «x», «j» «z» is a sign that the word is a borrowed one: zeal (Lat), zero (Fr.), zinc (Gr.), xylophone (Gr.);
the combinations ph, kh, eau in the root: philology (Gr.), khaki (Indian), beau (Fr.); «ch» is pronounced [k] in words of Greek origin: echo, school, [S] in late French borrowings: machine, parachute; and [tS] in native words and early borrowings.
The morphological structure of the word may also betray the for-eign origin of the latter: e.g. the suffix in violencello (Ital.) polysyllabic words is numerous among borrowings: government, condition, etc.
Another feature is the presence of prefixes: ab-, ad-, con-, de-, dis-, ex-, in-, per-, pre-, pro-, re-, trans- /such words often contain bound stems.
The irregular plural forms: beaux/from beau (Fr), data/from datum (Lat).
The lexical meaning of the word: pagoda (Chinese).

Assimilation of Borrowings
Assimilation of borrowings is a partial or total conformation to the phonetical, graphical or morphological standards of the receiving lan¬guage and its semantic structure.
Since the process of assimilation of borrowings includes changes in sound-form, morphological structure, grammar characteristics, meaning and usage, three types of assimilation are distinguished: phonetic, gram¬matical and lexical assimilation of borrowed words.
Phonetic assimilation comprises changes in sound form and stress. Sounds that were alien to the English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds. For instance, the long [e] in recent French bor¬rowings are rendered with the help of [ei:] cafe, communiquй, ballet; the consonant combinations pn, ps in the words pneumonia, psychology of Greek origin were simplified into [n] and [s] since pn and ps never occur in the initial position in native English words. In many words (especially borrowed from French and Latin) the accent was gradually transferred to the first syllable: honour, reason began to be stressed like father, brother.
Grammatical assimilation. As a rule, borrowed words lost their former grammatical categories and influence and acquired new grammati¬cal categories and paradigms by analogy with other English words, as for example: the Russian borrowing ‘sputnik’ acquired the paradigm sputnik, sputnik’s, sputniks, sputniks` having lost the inflections it has in the Russian language.
Lexical assimilation. When a word is taken into another language its semantic structure as a rule undergoes great changes. Polysemantic words are usually adopted only in one or two of their meanings. For ex¬ample the word ‘cargo’ which is highly polysemantic in Spanish, was bor¬rowed only in one meaning — «the goods carried in a ship». In the recipient language a borrowing sometimes acquires new meanings. E.g. the word ‘move’ in Modern English has developed the meaning of ‘propose’, ‘change one’s flat’, ‘mix with people’ and others that the corresponding French word does not possess.
There are other changes in the semantic structure of borrowed words: some meanings become more general, others more specialized, etc. For instance, the word ‘umbrella’ was borrowed in the meaning of ‘sunshade’ or ‘ parasole'(from Latin ‘ ombrella- ombra-shade’).
Among the borrowings in the English word-stock there are words that are easily recognized as foreign (such as decollete, Zeitgeist, graff to and there are others that have become so thoroughly assimilated that it is ex¬tremely difficult to distinguish them from native English words.(There words like street, city, master, river).
Unassimilated words differ from assimilated words in their pronun¬ciation, spelling, semantic structure, frequency and sphere of application. However there is no distinct borderline between the two groups. Neither are there more or less comprehensive criteria for determining the degree of assimilation. Still it is evident that the degree of assimilation depends on the length of the time the word has been used in the receiving language, on its importance and its frequency and the way of borrowing (words borrowed orally are assimilated more completely and rapidly than those adopted through writing). According to the degree of assimilation three groups of borrowings can be suggested: completely assimilated bor¬rowings, partially assimilated borrowings and unassimilated borrow¬ings or barbarisms.
The third group is not universally recognized, the argument being that barbarisms occur in speech only and not enter the language.
I. Completely assimilated words are found in all the layers of older borrowings: the first layer of Latin borrowings (cheese, street, wall, and wing); Scandinavian borrowings (fellow, gate, to call, to die, to take, to
want, happy, ill, low, wrong); early French borrowings (table, chair, finish, matter, dress, large, easy, common, to allow, to carry, to cry, to consider).
The number of completely assimilated words is many times greater than the number of partly assimilated ones. They follow all morphologi¬cal, phonetical and orthographic standards.
II. The partly (partially) assimilated words can be subdivided
into groups:
a). Borrowed words not assimilated phonetically: e.g. machine, cartoon, police (borrowed from French) keep the accent on the final syl¬lable; bourgeois, mйlange contain sounds or combinations of sounds that are not standard for the English language and do not occur in native words ([ wa:],the nasalazed [a]);
b). Borrowed words not completely assimilated graphically. This group is fairly large and variegated. These are, for instance, words bor¬rowed from French in which the final consonants are not pronounced: e.g. ballet, buffet, corps. French digraphs (ch, qu, ou, ete) may be re¬tained in spelling: bouquet, brioche.
c). Borrowed words not assimilated grammatically, for example, nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek which keep their original forms: crisis-crises, formula-formulae, phenomenon-phenomena.
d). Borrowed words not assimilated semantically because they de-note objects and notions peculiar to the country from which they come: sombrero, shah, sheik, rickchaw, sherbet, etc.
III. The so-called barbarisms are words from other languages used
by English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any
way, and for which there are corresponding English equivalents, e.g.: Italian
‘ciao’ (‘good-bye’), the French ‘affiche’ for ‘placard’, ‘carte blanche’
(‘freedom of action’), ‘faux pas’ (‘false step’).

Translation Loans and Semantic Loans
Alongside loan words proper there are translation loans (or calques) and semantic loans.
Translation loans are words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the English language, but according to pat¬terns, taken from other languages, by way of literal morpheme-for-morpheme translation. One of the earliest calques in the vocabulary of the English language is ‘Gospel’ (OE god-spell-‘евангелие’ literally ‘благая весть’) which is an exact reproduction of the etymological structure of the Greek euggelion, ‘ благая весть’, borrowed into English through Latin. Other examples are: ‘mother tongue* from Latin ‘lingua materna’ (родной язык), ‘it goes without saying’ from French ‘cela va sans dire’ (само собой разумеется).
The number of translation loans from German is rather large:
‘chain-smoker’ from ‘Kettenrauchen’ (заядлый курильщик);
‘world famous’ from ‘weltberuhmt’ (всемирно известный);
‘God’s acre’ from ‘Gottesacker’ (кладбище literally божье по¬ле);
‘masterpiece’ from ‘Meisterstuk'(шедевр);
‘Swan song’ from ‘Schwanengesang’ (лебединая песня);
‘superman’ from ‘Ubermensoh’ (сверхчеловек);
‘wonder child’ from ‘Wunderkind’.
There are a few calques from the languages of American Indians: ‘pale-face’ (бледнолицый); ‘pipe of peace’ (трубка мира); ‘War¬path’ (тропа войны); ‘war-paint’ (раскраска тела перед походом).
They are mostly used figuratively.
Calques from Russian are rather numerous. They are names of things and notions reflecting Soviet reality:
‘local Soviet’ (местный совет);
‘self-criticism’ (самокритика);
‘Labour-day’ (трудодень);
‘individual peasant’ (единоличник);
‘voluntary Sunday time’ (воскресник).
The last two are considered by N.N. Amosova to be oases of explana-tory translation.
Semantic borrowing is the development of a new meaning by a word due to the influence of a related word in another language, e.g. the English word ‘pioneer` meant `первооткрыватель` /now, under the influence of the Russian word ‘пионер’ it has come to mean ‘член детской коммунистической организации’.
Semantic loans are particularly frequent in related languages. For example, the Old English ‘dwellan’ (блуждать, медлить) developed into ‘dwell` in Modern English and acquired the meaning ‘жить’ under the influence of the Old Norse ‘dwelja’ (‘жить’). The words ‘bread’ (‘кусок хлеба’ in OE), ‘dream’ (‘радость’ in OE), ‘plough’ (‘мера земли’ in OE) received their present meanings from Old Norse.

Etymological Doublets.
Etymological doublets are two or more words of the same lan¬guage which were derived by different routes from the same basic word, but differing in meaning and phonemic shape. For example, the word ‘fact’ (‘факт, действительность’) and ‘feat’ (‘подвиг’) are derived from the same Latin word ‘facere’ (‘делать’) but ‘fact’ was borrowed directly from Latin and ‘feat’ was borrowed through French.
In modern English there are doublets of Latin, Germanic and na¬tive origin. Many Latin doublets are due to the different routes by which they entered the English vocabulary: some of the words are di¬rect borrowings; others came into English through Parisian French or Norman French.
For example, the words ‘major’, ‘pauper’, senior’ are direct bor¬rowings from Latin, while their doublets ‘mayor’ (‘майор’), ‘poor’ (‘бедный’), ‘.sir’ (‘сэр’) came from French.
The words ‘chase’ (‘гнаться, преследовать’), ‘chieftain’ (‘вождь/клана’), ‘guard’ (‘охрана/стража’) were borrowed into Mid¬dle English from Parisian French, and their doublets ‘catch’ (‘поймать’), ‘captain’ (‘капитан’), ‘ward’ (‘палата/больничная’) came from Norman French.
The doublets ‘shirt’ (‘рубашка’) — ‘skirt’ (‘юбка’), ‘shrew’ (‘сварливая женщина’) — ‘screw’ (‘винт, шуруп’), ‘schriek’ (‘вопить, кричать’) — ‘screech’ (‘пронзительно кричать’) are of Germanic ori¬gin. The first word of the pair comes down from Old English whereas the second one is a Scandinavian borrowing.
Examples of native doublets are ‘shadow’ (‘тень’) and ‘shade! Both are derived from the same Old English word ‘sceadu’. ‘Shade’ is developed from the Nominative case, ‘sceadu’ is derived from oblique ease ‘sceadwe’. The words ‘drag’ and ‘draw’ both come from Old English ‘dragan’ (‘тащить’)
Etymological doublets also arise as a result of shortening when both the shortened form and the full form of the word are used:
‘defense’ — ‘защита’ — ‘fence’ — »забор’;
‘history’ — ‘история’ — ‘story’ — ‘рассказ’.
Examples of ETYMOLOGICAL TRIPLETS (i.e. groups of three words of common root) are few in number:
hospital (Lat.) — hostel (Norm.Fr.) — hotel (Par.. Fr.);
to capture (Lat.) — to catch (Norm. Fr.) — to chase (Par. Fr.).

Morphemic Borrowings
True borrowings should be distinguished from words made up of morphemes borrowed from Latin and Greek:
E.g. telephone< tele (‘far off) and phone (‘sound’).
The peculiar character of the words of this type lies in the fact that they are produced by a word-building process operative in the English language, while the material used for this formation is bor¬rowed from «another language)).
The word phonograph was coined in 1877 by Edison from the Greek morphemes phone (‘sound’)+grapho (‘write*).
Morphemic borrowings are mostly scientific and technical terms and international in character, the latter fact makes it difficult to deter¬mine whether the word was really coined within the vocabulary of English or not.

International Words
Borrowings or loans are seldom limited to one language. «Words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of simulta¬neous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source are called INTERNATIONAL WORDS». (I. V. Arnold).
Such words usually convey notions which are significant in the field of communication. Most of them are of Latin and Greek origin.
Most scientists have international names; e.g. physics, chemistry, biol-ogy, linguistics, etc.
Modern means of communication expand global contacts which result in the considerable growth of international vocabulary.
International words play a very prominent part in various spheres of terminology, such as vocabulary of science, art, industry, etc. The great number of Italian words, connected with architecture, painting and music were borrowed into all the European languages and became international: arioso, baritone, allegro, concert, opera, etc.
Examples of new or comparatively new words due to the progress of science illustrate the importance of international vocabulary: bion¬ics, genetic code, site, database, etc.
The international word-stock has also grown due to the influx of exotic borrowed words like bungalow, pundit, sari, kraal, etc.
The English language has also contributed a considerable number of international words to all the world languages. Among them the sports terms: football, hockey, rugby, tennis, golf, etc.
International words should not be mixed with words of the com¬mon Indo-European stock that also comprise a sort of common fund of the European languages. Thus, one should not make a false conclusion that the English ‘son’, the German ‘Sohn’ and the Russian ‘сын’ are international words due to their outward similarity. They represent the Indo-European element in each of the three languages and they are COGNATES, i.e. words of the same etymological root and not borrowings.

Practical

Etymological Survey of the Modern English Language
Exercise 1.
State the etymology of the given words. Write them out in three columns: a) completely assimilated borrowings; b) partially assimilated borrowings; c) unassimilated borrowings or barbarisms.
Torchère, wall, maharani, á la mode, datum, perestroika, gate, têtê-á- têtê, want, chalet, ad hoc, sheikh, parlando, nuclkeus, parquet, matter, bagel, á la carte, kettle, chauffeur, formula, pari-mutuel, shaman, finish, corps, alcazar, commedia dell’arte, money, souvenir, bacillus, pas de deux, ill, spahi, stratum, nota bene, spaghetti, ménage á trios, odd, memoir, parenthesis, hibakusha, padrona, incognito, thesis, coup de maitre, tzatziki, sabotage, ad libitum, stimulus, Soyuz, alameda, street, boulevard, criterion, déjà vu, torero, yin, Übermensch, macaroni, tzigane, sensu lato, hypothesis, bagh, pousada, shiatsu, shapka.

Exercise 2.
Write out international words from the given sentences:
1.    He gave a false address to the police. 2. I’ve seen so many good films lately. 3. Do you take sugar in your coffee? 4. Do you play tennis? 5. Arrange the words in alphabetical order. 6. Charlotte Bronte wrote under the pseudonym of Currer Bell. 7. He worked in radio for nearly 40 years. 8. Many people feel that their interests are not represented by mainstream politics. 9. We’ve visited the open-air theatre in London’s Regents Park. 10. I’m worried about my son’s lack of progress in English. 11. The government has promised to introduce reforms of the tax system. 12. He went on to study medicine at Edinburgh University.
Exercise 3.
Give the “false cognates” (false friends) in the Russian language to the given English words. State the difference in their meanings.
Model: argument
The false cognate of the word argument is Russian аргумент. The word argument means “an angry disagreement between people”, whereas the word аргумент has the meaning “reasoning”. 
Baton, order, to reclaim, delicate, intelligent, artist, sympathetic, fabric, capital, to pretend, romance.