How French Entered English After 1066

 

A recent trip to England, when I visited the present-day town of Battle, East Sussex, where the Battle of Hastings occurred, inspired me to do a series of posts about how the English language changed after that battle.

William the Conqueror of Normandy, France, invaded British soil, and these French-speaking Normans eventually defeated the Old English-speaking Saxons led by King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066. Language experts often cite this as the start of a period of time having a more pronounced effect on the development of the English language than any other event in history. 

Some changes occurred very quickly and others took longer to be accepted, but in the course of a few centuries, English went from being a strictly Germanic language to one infused with a large Latinate vocabulary, which came via French.

You can read all my posts about French into English, including this recent series covering words about legal topics, warfare, food, religion, government, literature, and even things of pleasure.

Ecclesiastical Words That Come from French

On 28 September 1066, William the Conqueror of Normandy arrived on British soil. He defeated the British in the Battle of Hastings on October 14, and on Christmas Day, he was crowned King of England in Westminster Abby. In the years and centuries that followed, English took on many French words to add to its Anglo-Saxon and Germanic base. This is our sixth post about how English changed after that defeat.

Canterbury Cathedral goes back to 597AD when St Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory
 the Great as a missionary, established his seat (or 'Cathedra') in Canterbury.
 In 1170 Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in the Cathedral and ever since,
the Cathedral has attracted thousands of pilgrims, as told famously
 in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

For example, when Chaucer wrote in the opening of lines of The Canterbury Tales that when April's sweet showers pierce the drought of March and "Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages," it was 300 years after the Norman Invasion. By then, the English word pilgrim was in widespread use. The French word pelegrin — meaning "foreign" — in turn came from a Latin root for "abroad." Pilgrim and pilgrimage have the same root as the English word peregrinate, which means to travel, especially on foot.

Many of those words that entered English were ecclesiastical words from religion and the church. The word religion itself first appeared in English to mean "life under monastic vows." The Old French word religion derived from a Latin word meaning "obligation, bond, reverence."

A life under monastic vows came with all sorts of practices, like saying one's prayers, derived from the Old French verb preier "to ask earnestly." A preiere was something "obtained by entreaty" and of uncertain outcome. This sense of uncertainty is reflected in English words sharing the same root as prayer, including precarious, deprecate, postulate, and expostulate.

The word for preach, however, came from an Old French root meaning not to ask but "to proclaim." The French verb prechier came from the Latin praedicare, to "pre + declare."

The holiness of saint (from Old French seint) can be found in the word's Latin root sanctus, meaning "holy." The English word sanctuary is from Old French sanctuaire, which originally meant a "church or other sacred place where a fugitive was immune by the law of the medieval church from arrest." Related English words include sanctify, sanctity, and sanctimonious.

Merci is a French word still in use, today as the equivalent of the English "thank you" — and in Old French it meant "pity" — just as we still use it in the phrase "have mercy on me." We also use this root when we speak of merciless killings and merciful people.

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French Pleasure After the Norman Conquest

 

William

The Battle of Hastings was fought on 14 October 1066 between the Norman-French army of William, Duke of Normandy, and an English army under the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson. Harold's defeat began the Norman Conquest of England. It took place approximately 7 mi (11 km) northwest of Hastings, close to the present-day town of Battle, East Sussex, and was a decisive Norman victory. It had a pronounced effect on the development of the English language, changing English from a strictly Germanic language to one infused with a large Latinate vocabulary, which came via French.

This fifth post in this series looks at words surrounding pleasure and pastime that come to us by way of French. Let's start with the word pleasure itself, from Old French plaisir, "to please." 

Delight is derived from Old French delitier, "to charm, allure, please." Later, in English, the verb took on the function of a noun as well. It's the basis for the word "delicate" as well as a bounty of food-related words, including the delicacy you might purchase at a deli and find to be delectable, or delicious.

Delight is often associated with joy, another word entering Middle English from Old French. The French joie was based on the Latin verb "to rejoice." 

If someone jumps up and down with joy and then starts to dance, they might be described with another English word that came in through French. The Old French verb is dancer, and it came from a Germanic root that meant "to stretch."

To act at leisure or to dally — these are also words we get from the French. Old French leisir was based on Latin licere, "be allowed" — and is the basis for the word license as well. The Old French word dalier meant "to chat" and was a word used commonly in Anglo-Norman in the years just after the invasion, when a sort of bilingual society existed — with nobles chatting in French and common folk in English. The word dalliance actually started out in English meaning "conversation" but has since come to take on the meaning of "amorous flirtation."

Sport also derives from French. In Middle English, sport meant broadly "hobby" or "entertainment"; it came from the French word disport. 

The English music is from Old French musique via Latin from Greek for the "art of the Muses." The root is also the basis for amuse, bemuse, mosaic, and museum.

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Legal Terms from French

This fourth post is on legal words from French that entered English after the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Norman legal system forms the primary basis for the vocabulary of our modern legal system. 

A defendant is summoned to court, from the Old French cort, from the Latin word for yard. If it's a civil affair, one might hope that all people "present at court" (the original meaning of courtier) will be courteous, which originally meant "having manners fit for a royal court."

A complaint is filed by the plaintiff, from the Old French word plaintive — a "lamentation" — which is itself derived from a Latin word, planctus, meaning "beating of the breast."

During the course of a trial, both sides usually introduce evidence, from Old French meaning "obvious to the eye or mind." It's a word composed of the French prefix e ("out" as in evict) and videre "to see." Evidence is laid out for everyone to see.

Perhaps the defendant is in fact a felon, from the Old French word felon, which meant "wicked" or "a wicked person."

During a court hearing and in other legal matters, attorneys advocate and provide advocacy, words that came into Middle English from Old French, from a verb that meant "to call to one's aid." The voc root is also part of words like vocabulary, vocalize, vocation, vociferous, voice, vouch, voucher, vowel, equivocate, evocatory, provoke, and revoke.

A verdict could be made by a group of peers, a jury, from the Old French juree, an oath or inquiry. Or perhaps, the judge will enter a judgment in the final stages of the judicial process and justice will have been served. These are words that came into English through French, and all revolve around the Latin root jus — "law" and also "right." It's also the root for judicious and judiciary.

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Words of War from French

Our continuing series of words from French that entered English after the Norman invasion of 1066 brings us to words of warfare and the military. It is not surprising that some words that entered English after William the Conqueror of Normandy, France, defeated Old English-speaking Saxons at the Battle of Hastings, and that this category of words was part of that change. Within the course of a few centuries, English went from being a strictly Germanic language to one infused with a large Latinate vocabulary, which came via French.

The English adapted from their French-speaking Norman invaders many words surrounding elements of war. We send to faraway lands, for example, our soldiers, a word that came to us in Middle English from the Old French word soldier from soulde, the Latin word for a "gold coin of the Roman Empire."

Our soldiers are sent off in battalions to do battle, from Old French bataille, based on late Latin battualia describing "military or gladiatorial exercises" — from the Latin root verb "to beat."

In the course of the war, sometimes a sergeant (Old French, sergent) or commander calls for a siege, based on the Old French sege — from asegier, a verb that means "to besiege." Originally, in Middle English, besiege meant to "sit down in front of."

The Old French verb armer means "to supply with weapons" and is the basis of our army, as well as armor and armory. Navy also came into Middle English from Old French, from the Latin word for ship, navis, which also forms the root of navigation.

A traitor is a person guilty of treason, both from Anglo-Norman French treisoun, meaning "handing over."

The word war itself is distinctly Anglo-Norman. The late Old English word werre, which evolved to modern English war, is from an Anglo-Norman French variant of the Old (and Modern) French word guerre.

Werre (Old English war) also shares a Germanic base with the word "worse." The old Germanic werra indicated "confusion, discord." (Modern German developed a different word entirely for war, krieg.) Middle English warrior is from Old Northern French werreior, a variation of guerreior, "to make war."

A war can end after defeat or retreat (Old French retraiter, "to pull back") or after a treaty (Old French traite), and this might lead to everlasting peace, which came to English from Latin pax via the French word pais.

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