Page:On the history and use of the suffixes -ery (-ry), -age, and -ment in English.djvu/13



rof. makes an attempt somewhere in his book, Growth and Structure of the English Language, psychologically to explain the fact why such a large number of everyday words were adopted from French into English after the Norman Conquest. After speaking of the different categories of French loan-words and pointing out that these are not only technical words, but that many non-technical words were taken over, because «it was the fashion to interlard one's speech with French words», Jespersen goes on to say (§ 93, p. 91): «If, then, the English adopted so many French words because it was the fashion in every respect to imitate their 'betters', we are allowed to see in this adoption of non-technical words an outcome of the same trait of their character as that which in its exaggerated form has in modern times been termed snobbism or toadyism, and which has made large sections of the English people more interested in the births, deaths and especially marriages of dukes and marquises than in anything else outside their own small personal sphere.»

It seems to me that this explanation of the adoption of the words in question is not very convincing. I think there is no need to resort to any psychological explanation 1