and, from
The Story of English by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil (the companion volume to the PBS series, which I missed, dammit), in part of a passage about the Renaissance:
In these times sailors were the messengers of language. Part of their vocabulary would have been "Low Dutch" words like fokkinge, kunte, krappe (probably derived from Latin) and bugger (originally a Dutch borrowing from the French), words that are sometimes inaccurately said to be "Anglo-Saxon."Who knew?! Okay, I have to admit that's one bit of info I retained from reading this book, ages ago....Now when I say naughty sweary words, instead of adding, "Pardon my French," which I used to do, I say, "Pardon my Low Dutch." People laugh but they don't get it....And I know, I know - it would be shorter and easier not to say any of it, from the sweary words on through to the pardon-seeking addendum...!
The passage goes on to say:
From the poetry of Spenser (who invented braggadocio in The Faerie Queen) to the slang of the sailors who defeated the Armada, there was, throughout English society, a new urge to use English to communicate.(It further notes,
The importance of the Renaissance to the English language was that it added between 10,000 and 12,000 new words to the lexicon.)
