In remote monasteries and enclosed orders, in arcane services and devoted godly scholarship, without threat and despite hindrance, these men and their successors fed the growing English with their Church Latin. Gradually English, partly I think because it could control these marginal praying clerics, took on Latin, the second classical tongue of the ancient world, and Latin smuggled in Greek. The English talent to absorb and its appetite for layerings had begun with what are called “loan words.” These words began by creeping in at the outer edges of the concerns of the pagan English. “Angel,”
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