A) Losses

Development of the English Vocabulary

From the 12th to 19th c.

Types and Sources of Changes

According to the estimates made by modern philologists, in the course of the thousand years — from OE to modern times — the English vocabulary has multiplied tenfold. Perhaps, if it were possible to count all the meanings expressed by lexical items in different historical periods, the figure would be much higher.

Among the changes in the vocabulary we can distinguish losses of words or their meanings, replacements and additions.

a) Losses

Like many other lexical changes losses were connected with events in external history: with the changing conditions of life and the obsolescence of many medieval concepts and customs.

Some regulations and institutions of OE kingdoms were cancelled or forgotten in the ME period. OE witena3emōt ‘assembly of the elders’ ceased to exist under the Norman rule; OE Dane3eld, the tax paid to the Scandinavians, was not collected after the collapse of the Danish Empire — both words have survived only as historical terms. OE wer3eld was a fine paid by the murderer to the family of the murdered man; the word became obsolete together with the custom.

Some rituals of the heathen religion were abandoned — after the introduction of Christianity — and their names dropped out of use, e.g. OE tiber, blōt which meant ‘sacrifice’.

In OE there were many groups of synonyms whose differentiation became irrelevant in ME; therefore some of the synonyms fell out of use. For instance, OE here, fierd, werod indicated an armed force, an army (here must have had a negative connotation as it was used only in reference to a hostile army, the Danes). The distinction between the synonyms was lost when they were all replaced by the ME borrowings from French army, troop.

The English vocabulary suffered considerable losses when a whole stylistic stratum of words, the specific OE poetic vocabulary, went out of use together with the genre of OE poetry; those were numerous poetic synonyms of ordinary, neutral words, stock metaphors and traditional “ kennings ”.

Many words current in ME fell out of use and became obsolete in NE, e.g.: ME chapman ‘pedlar’, ME romare ‘pilgrim to Rome’, ME outridere ‘rider visiting the manors of a monastery’, ME gypoun ‘short jacket’.

Losses could also affect the plane of content. Though the word survived, some of its meanings became obsolete. Thus OE sift had the meaning ‘price of a wife’ connected with one of the early meanings of the verb 3yfan (NE give) ‘give in marriage’; OE sellan lost the meaning ‘give’ which it could express in OE alongside ‘sell’; OE talu meant ‘number, series’ and ‘story, narrative’, while its ME and NE descendant tale retained only the latter meanings.

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