Classical compound: Encyclopedia II - Classical compound - History and reception

Classical compound - History and reception

English began incorporating many of these words in the sixteenth century; geography first appeared in an English text in 1535, other early adopted words that still survive include mystagogue, from the 1540s, and androgyne, from the 1550s. The use of these technical terms predates the scientific method; the several varieties of divination all take their names from classical compounds, such as alectryomancy, divination by the pecking of chickens.

Not all English writers have been friendly to the reception of classical vocabulary. The Tudor period writer Sir John Cheke wrote:

and therefore rejected what he called "inkhorn terms".

Similar sentiments moved the nineteenth century author William Barnes to create "pure English," in which he sought to strip out all Greek and Latinisms and find Anglo-Saxon equivalents therefor: for Barnes, the newly invented art of the photograph became a sun-print. Unlike this one, some of Barnes's coinages caught on, such as foreword, Barnes's replacement for the preface of a book. Later, Poul Anderson wrote a jocular piece called Uncleftish Beholding in a constructed language based on English which others have called Ander-Saxon; this attemped to create a pure English vocabulary for nuclear physics.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History and reception", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki