How the English language borrows from others

Over its 1,500-year existence, English has borrowed words from more than 350 other languages. Anxiety about such imports - usually called loanwords, although this is a misnomer, since no borrowed term is ever going to be given back - has tended to be niggling, before turning sulphurous.

Typically, loans have been seen as symptoms of intellectual and moral laxity. In the age of Shakespeare, for instance, authors' verbal innovations were widely regarded as an affront to national dignity.

Patriots condemned the adoption of "oversea language" and the "harsh collision" of exotic polysyllables, which laid them open to the depravity of "back-door Italians" and reputedly syphilitic Frenchmen.