Latin loanwords versus English neologisms in the early modern period: the inkhorn controversy.

In the early modern era, the expansion of the British Empire, and the consequent extension of trade, resulted in the growth of new specialized knowledge; hence, Latin lost its currency as the vehicle for learned discourse. As a vernacular, English started its struggle for recognition towards standardization, and the enlargement of its vocabulary was subject of public debate and disagreement. In the 16 th century, the inkhorn controversy was a major dispute over the borrowing of learned words from classical languages, which was considered as a mere exercise of pedantry, or from the Anglo-Saxon roots – although English revealed all its deficiencies as a vehicle for the new disciplines -. Additionally, this quarrel included the so-called Chaucerisms and loan words from overseas languages, which both were publicly criticized as being adopted for the main purpose of ostentation. As a result, both inkhorn terms and hard words were assumed to be obstacles to the development of English as a language for the new branches of knowledge, for they resulted in both linguistic opaqueness and obscurity. And although largely debated, the inkhorn controversy is still crucial to shed some light on lexeme formation in early modern specialised discourse.