Linguistic purism in English

Purism in the linguistic field is the historical trend of languages to conserve intact their lexical structure of word families, in opposition to foreign influences which are considered 'impure'.

In stronger forms, new words are coined from Germanic roots (such as wordstock for vocabulary) or revived from older stages of English (such as shrithe for proceed).

Noted purists of Early Modern English include John Cheke,[3] Thomas Wilson,[4] Ralph Lever,[5] Richard Rowlands,[6] and Nathaniel Fairfax.

[7] Modern linguistic purists include William Barnes,[1] Charles Dickens,[8] Gerard Manley Hopkins,[9] Elias Molee,[10] Percy Grainger,[11] and George Orwell.

Anglo-Norman was used in schools and dominated literature, nobility and higher life, leading a wealth of French loanwords to enter English over the course of several centuries—English only returned to courts of law in 1362, and to government in the following century.

[20] Dorset poet, minister, and philologist William Barnes coined several words to promote "strong old Anglo-Saxon speech", including speechcraft for grammar, birdlore for ornithology, and bendsome for flexible.

[24] In 1989, science fiction writer Poul Anderson released a similarly-written text about basic atomic theory called Uncleftish Beholding composed almost fully of Germanic-rooted words.