Saxonism

Saxonism

is a semi-technical term for a word of Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin origin, e.g. hundred as distinct from century. Over the centuries since the Norman Conquest the Latinate stock of vocabulary has increased greatly, and recent years have seen a special recourse to words of Latin and Greek origin to give what is regarded as an appropriate importance to great new discoveries such as television (of mixed Latin and Greek origin) and computers. At various times there have been movements to encourage the use of Anglo-Saxon words, typified in the 19c by the efforts of the English poet William Barnes to promote words such as bodeword instead of commandment and gleecraft instead of music. Fowler, however, was not among these Saxonizers, noting (1926) that ‘the wisdom of this nationalism in language —at least in so thoroughly composite a language as English —is very questionable’.