English Old to New

Week 7

Early Modern English 2

against

Sir Thomas Chaloner in 1549, a purist:Such men therfore, that in deede are

archoltes, and woulde be taken yet for sages and philosophers, maie I not aptelie calle theim foolelosophers? For as in this behalfe I have thought good to borowe a littell of the Rhetoriciens of these daies,

whi plainely thynke theim selfes demygods, if lyke horsleches thei can

shew two tongues, I meane to mingle their writings with words sought out of strange

langages,5 as if it were alonely thyng for theim to poudre theyr bokes with

ynkehorne termes, although perchaunce as unaptly applied as a gold rynge in a

sowes nose...

Favourites of inkhornism

From: A Hundred Mery Tales

http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLang/ugrad/readings/EMod/loves_labours.htm

From Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1593-94)

• Actus Quartus Enter the Pedant, Curate and Dull

• Pedant.   Satis quid sufficit. • Curat.   I praise God for you sir, your reasons at dinner haue beene sharpe &

sententious: pleasant without scurrillity, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresie: I did conuerse this quondam day with a companion of the Kings, who is (6) intituled, nominated, or called, Dom Adriano de Armatha.

• Ped.   Noui  hominum tanquam te, His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptorie: his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gate maiesticall, and his generall behauiour vaine, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odde, as it were, too peregrinat, as I may call it.   (12)

• Curat.   A most singular and choise Epithat,  Draw out his Table-booke,

• Peda.   He draweth out the thred of his verbositie, finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such phanaticall phantasims, such insociable and poynt deuise companions, such rackers of ortagriphie, as to speake dout fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he shold pronounce debt; d e b t, not det: he clepeth a Calf, Caufe: halfe, hawfe; neighbour vocatur nebour; neigh abreuiated ne: this is abhominable, which he would call abhominable: it insinuateth me of infamie: ne inteligis domine, to make franticke, lunaticke?   (22)