The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

by Melvyn Bragg

The number of their words which entered into general use was not as many as the strength of the invasion might have promised. But as it were to compensate for that, many of them have become keywords. For instance, “they,” “their” and “them” slowly replaced earlier forms (though they did not enter the language of London until the fifteenth century). Early loan words include “score,” and “steersman” is modelled on an Old Norse word, but they could also spread into the common tongue with “get” and “both” and “same,” “gap,” “take,” “want,” “weak” and “dirt.” What is impressive is its ordinariness. Other Norse loan words include “birth,” “cake,” “call,” “dregs,” “egg,” “freckle,” “guess,” “happy,” “law,” “leg,” “ransack,” “scare,” “sister,” “skill,” “smile,” “thrift” and “trust.” The “sk” sound is a characteristic of Old Norse and English borrowed words like “score,” “skin” and “sky.” Other words from Old Norse include “knife,” “hit,” “husband,” “root” and “wrong.” So it could be argued that although they were not numerous these words became part of the soil of the language. Perhaps English was at a stage where it would only admit words which could help it describe its own world, words which could bed in without disturbing the existing word-hoard.