A Language of Beautiful Impurity
8th October 2024
The English linguistic purism movement dates back to the 16th century, and concerned the use of ‘inkhorn terms’, foreign loanwords that repeat existing usage. One of the earliest proponents was Thomas Wilson, who criticised those who ‘seeke so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mothers language’.
One of the most notable campaigners was Victorian poet William Barnes, who wished to replace foreign loan words with Germanic Anglo-Saxon terms he’d made up: genealogy becomes kin-lore, grammar speech-craft and, perhaps less attractive, forceps become nipperlings. He also suggested wortlore for botany, welkinfire for meteor, and sunprint for photograph.
What made Barnes interesting was that he was a noted scholar of foreign languages. Paul Kingsnorth, who takes a keen interest in Old English, described him as ‘a rural boy from Dorset who became a literary figure befriended by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Thomas Hardy. He was a polymath, speaking seven languages and teaching himself mathematics, music and wood engraving. All of this was done from the Dorset village he lived in; his walks in to Dorchester to set his watch by the town clock were the closest he came to metropolitan life.’