The Inkhorn Controversy: Shaping the English Language

The Inkhorn Controversy

The Opposition

The wholesale borrowing of words from other languages did not meet with universal favor. The strangeness of the new words was an objection to some people. Some considered the use of learned words mere pedantry and tried to drive them out by ridicule, calling them “inkhorn” terms. Sir Thomas Chaloner is an example.

The strongest objection to the new words was on the score of their obscurity. The great exponent of this view was Thomas Wilson, whose Arte of Rhetorique (1553) was several times reprinted. Of the forty-five such terms he cited, thirty are not found before the 16th century, and the remaining fifteen were of such infrequent occurrence as to be considered by him inkhorn terms. It is notable that many of them are in common use today.

The Defense

The attitude revealed in these utterances was apparently not the prevailing one. There were many more who, in precept or practice, approved of judicious importations. Not only had English borrowed much in the past, but, as they frequently pointed out, other languages, including Latin and Greek, had also enriched themselves in this way. They argued that the strangeness of the new words would soon wear off.

The charge of obscurity was also met. Elyot maintained this throughout The Governour. The position of the defenders was in general summed up by George Pettie. A little later, some sanction for the borrowings was derived from authority.

The Compromise

The opposition to inkhorn terms was at its height in the middle of the 16th century. By the end of the century, it had largely spent its force. Borrowing had gone so far that the attack was directed at the abuse of the procedure rather than at the procedure itself. The use of unfamiliar words could easily be overdone. He defends the words scientific, major-domo, politician, conduct (verb), and others.

Examples of usurped Latin and French words include:

• Methode
• Placation
• Function
• Prolix
• Figurative

No Elizabethan could wholly avoid the use of the new words. As is so often the case, the safest course was a middle one: to borrow, but “without too manifest insolence and too wanton affectation.”