English words coined in the Reformation Era
ForumReformation Era: History and Literature
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1geoffreymeadows
I’m reading History in English Words, by Owen Barfield, kind of on the side, in addition to my Reformation readings. Owen Barfield was a member of the Inklings, the English Oxford Christian group of authors that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. One paragraph in the book talks about words derived during or closely after the Reformation:
“Very soon after the Reformation we find… a very pretty little vocabulary of abuse. ‘Bigoted’, ‘faction’, ‘factious’, ‘malignant’, ‘monkish’, ‘papistical’, ‘pernicious’, ‘popery’ are among the products of the struggle between Catholic and Protestant; and the terms ‘Roman’, ‘Romanism’, and ‘Romanist’ soon acquired such a vituperative sense that it became necessary to evolve ‘Roman Catholic’ in order to describe the adherents of that faith without giving offense to them. The later internecine struggles among the Protestants themselves gave us ‘Puritan’, ‘precise’, and ‘libertine’ — reminiscent of a time when ‘liberty’ of thought was assumed as a matter of course to include licence of behaviour — ‘credulous’, ‘superstitious’, ‘selfish’, ‘selfishness’, and the awful Calvinistic word ‘reprobate’. It was towards the end of the Puritan ascendancy that ‘atone’ and ‘atonement’ (at-one-ment) acquired their strong suggestion of legal expiation, and it may not be without significance that the odious epithet ‘vindictive’ was then for the first time applied approvingly to the activities of the Almighty Himself.” (p. 159).
Some revelations about how words reflecting self-knowledge have changed are found in the latter chapters of the book.
“Very soon after the Reformation we find… a very pretty little vocabulary of abuse. ‘Bigoted’, ‘faction’, ‘factious’, ‘malignant’, ‘monkish’, ‘papistical’, ‘pernicious’, ‘popery’ are among the products of the struggle between Catholic and Protestant; and the terms ‘Roman’, ‘Romanism’, and ‘Romanist’ soon acquired such a vituperative sense that it became necessary to evolve ‘Roman Catholic’ in order to describe the adherents of that faith without giving offense to them. The later internecine struggles among the Protestants themselves gave us ‘Puritan’, ‘precise’, and ‘libertine’ — reminiscent of a time when ‘liberty’ of thought was assumed as a matter of course to include licence of behaviour — ‘credulous’, ‘superstitious’, ‘selfish’, ‘selfishness’, and the awful Calvinistic word ‘reprobate’. It was towards the end of the Puritan ascendancy that ‘atone’ and ‘atonement’ (at-one-ment) acquired their strong suggestion of legal expiation, and it may not be without significance that the odious epithet ‘vindictive’ was then for the first time applied approvingly to the activities of the Almighty Himself.” (p. 159).
Some revelations about how words reflecting self-knowledge have changed are found in the latter chapters of the book.
