On the other side of the Inkhorn Controversy were the Purists who disparaged the abuse and excess to which many of the Neologizers had gone. Sir Thomas Elyot was an early Neologizer who, aware of the confusion a new word might cause, would pair it with a more familiar synonym or an explanation to aid readers’ understanding. These Neologizers believed such practices would enrich the English language, which during the Tudor period was considered ‘rude’ and ‘barbarous,’ lacking the appropriate words to express learned ideas. Within the Inkhorn Controversy there were those who supported borrowings and coinages. (The term derives from the early ink containers made of animal horn and the notion that these lengthy words used up more ink than their shorter, Saxon-rooted English counterparts compare the Latin conflagration and the English fire.) The Inkhorn Controversy: Support and Opposition Long, Latinate words used, or coined, by scholarly writers soon became known as “inkhorn terms” or “inkhornisms.” They were viewed by many with scorn, taking on connotations of learned pedantry, and sparked what became known as the Inkhorn Controversy. These words were directly borrowed from foreign languages-especially Latin and Greek legal, technical, and medical terms-or were newly coined (invented) by writers.
In fact, he was part of an early modern trend that saw between 10,000 and 25,000 new words enter the English language in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His works were the first to record such words as ‘laughable,’ ‘eventful,’ ‘accommodation’ and ‘lack-lustre’.īut Shakespeare was far from alone in this lexical creativity. Shakespeare turned nouns into verbs ( grace, season), created compounds ( faire-play, pell-mell), and added prefixes and suffixes ( courtship, dauntless, disgraceful). In his eulogy to Shakespeare published in the 1623 First Folio, fellow playwright Ben Jonson praises Shakespeare’s literary accomplishments despite his having “small Latine, and lesse Greeke.” While Shakespeare put to use what he did know of Latin and Greek in many of his plays and sonnets, he is better known today for his innovative use of the English language.