"[5] The earliest use of the word in English to describe inappropriate usage was in the 16th century to refer to mixing other languages with Latin or Greek, especially in texts treating classics.
Thus, the authors of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana criticized the French word linguistique ("linguistics") as "more than ordinary barbarism, for the Latin substantive lingua is here combined, not merely with one, but with two Greek particles".
[3] Although barbarism has no precise technical definition, the term is still used in non-technical discussions of language use to describe a word or usage as incorrect or nonstandard.
While the cream of the high society could afford a genuine French gouvernante (governess, or female live-in tutor), the provincial "upper class" had problems.
Still, the desire to show off their education produced what Aleksander Griboyedov's Woe from Wit termed "the mixture of the tongues: French with Nizhegorodian" (смесь языков: французского с нижегородским).