The French connection—III

THE Renaissance brought many new developments, including an interest in the classical languages and literature, inventions and techniques. There were many new things to talk about without the appropriate words for them. This led to a spate of fresh borrowings. As the period of world-wide exploration got underway in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, words came into English from over 50 other languages. French, too, became a major contributor.

Some words that were borrowed at this time are: alloy baluster, bizarre, comrade, detail, equip, essay, explore, probability, progress, retrench and surpass. The word bizarre has a bizarre history. It comes from the French bizarre meaning strange. This can be traced to the Italian bizzarro meaning capricious which, in turn, grows from the Basque bizar, meaning beard. Now what does a beard have to do with bizarre, meaning peculiar? History gives the answer. Spanish soldiers were usually bearded and the thick beards gave an impression of strangeness to the French people. Hence the connection !

In the 150 years after the Renaissance, the number of French words taken into the vocabulary of English dwindled. This was in spite of the prestigious place that French had as the lingua franca of diplomacy and European culture. The major reason for this decline was the English man’s consciousness about the deficiencies of English viz a viz the rules governing grammar and spelling.

Literary notables like Dr Johnson, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift set to work to repair these defects and to their efforts, we owe the formal structure of English today. Being preoccupied with this kind of linguistic reform, the Englishman was in no mood for large-scale foreign borrowings. Yet, neither patriotism nor scholarly zeal could stem the time-honoured flow of French into English. Words like ballet, debut, dentist, brunette, foible, canteen, cartoon, champagne, cohesion, routine and syndicate did manage to creep in.

Tap-root

The word pencil is used in English as well as in Hindi. It comes from the Latin penicilum, meaning small tail. The usage comes from ancient times when a feather tip was used for writing, by dipping in ink. This feather brush was faster and smoother than a pen, but convenience comes first, so it gave way to the pencil of today. Only the name has been retained, not the romance of writing with a peacock feather.

— Deepti