Inkhorn Terms

Writers of the English Renaissance often felt that the word stock of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE did notrift gold provide as flexible an instrument for the full expression of their thoughts and feelings as had ancient Latin and Greek. A number of authors attempted to remedy that perceived defect by introducing into English terms that had been borrowed from other languages. Such terms often struck their readers or auditors as strange and un-English, and as those who introduced them were often pedants andtera gold preachers with ink-stained fingers who used hollow cows’ horns as portable inkwells, the words came to be known as inkhorn terms. Some of them appeared once or a few times and found their way to history’s trash heap.Others became standard fixtures in a language forever growing, changing, and open to novel vocabulary and usage.

Here is a list of words that many considered inkhorn terms when they first appeared but that have become standard in the language: affability, capacity, celebrate, expending, frivolous, and ingenious. Here is a list of inkhorn terms that did not survive in the standard tongue: fatigate, ingent, magnifical, and revoluting.