English Is Not from England, and Other Little Surprises

We speak many verbs that originated from French. In a way, all verbs are French, in that the word verb itself came to us from that language—as did many of the words describing English sentences. From French itself also came adjective, adverb, and (sacre bleu!) interjection !—and from Anglo-Norman and Middle French came such words as noun, pronoun, and (not to keep you dangling) participle. Prefix? Latin. And suffix, too.

And creating the word gerund was borrowing Latin, as well.

The word English? Oh, it’s English. Old English, in fact. But not British. For more on that, and some peeks into the components of our non-British language that may contradict your assumptions, let’s speak . . .