Word: conquest
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...very little wine be poured into a cupful of water it will at first penetrate in irregular streaks without mingling, but will gradually give a color and flavor to the whole. This was really the case with the Norman-French brought into England at the time of the Conquest. At first the French and the Anglo-Saxon existed side by side, the one as language of the Court, the higher clergy and the nobles; the other of the people. Gradually as the connexion with Frence grew weaker and at last ceased altogether, and the realm of England began to develop...
...trace in it sometimes the tide lines and driftmarks of civilization. The word chimney, for example, coming into English from the Latin by the way of Italian and French, gives us good ground for suspecting that the mass of the population of Saxon England before the Norman conquest got rid of their smoke by the less ingenious outlet of door and window. In cordwainer (still the legal designation of shoemaker) we are pointed to the fact that the people of Cordova made the best leather-a fame to which Morocco succeeded-hence Cordovannier, cordonnier, cordwainer. Cant perpetuates a sneer against...
...things, I think, are clear: that it is impossible to put our finger upon the exact point of time when the speech of England became what we understand under the name English, and that a language existed as early as three centuries and a half after the Norman conquest which is perfectly comprehensible to us and which differs from our own only in being archaic...
...supremacy of the Franks due to the manner of their conquest...
...relation that was necessitated by geography. Yet out of the mixture of these three, there was produced a tongue, fitted by its strength and scope of expression to be the instrument of the greatest of modern literatures. England was much influenced by foreign thought form the time of the conquest; especially the laiety, who had been wofully lacking in all education, now gained some appreciation for refinement and culture of mind...