English

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English Englisch, also English and Inglis,^[1][2][3] inherited from Old English Englisc, also Ænglisc,^[2][4][5][6] formed from Engle (“the Angles”) and -isc, the source of -ish.^{[7][8][3][6][9]} Its use in Middle English was reinforced by Anglo-Norman Engleis.^[2][8] The Angles were a Germanic people named after their homeland, Angul or Angeln, in what is now Schleswig, in the south of the Jutish peninsula.^[7][10][11] Ayto and Partridge explain the district's name as a word for a hook, from its shape, a relative of angler;^[10][11] Etymonline says only that it was supposedly so called.^[8] The billiards sense, spin put on a ball, is of uncertain origin.^[8][12] Etymonline derives it from French anglé (“angled”), which is similar to Anglais.^[8] Wilton says that the reason is not known, and thinks it most likely, though without firm evidence, that players from England brought the technique to the United States; he dismisses a claim in a 1959 letter to the “Sunday Times” that the name came from a man called English.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of the English people: the first written example, spelled Engliscne, is in the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, probably written around 880.^[13][3] For the language, Barnhart gives about 890,^[3] and Ayto credits the earliest use to Alfred the Great.^[10] The sense "of the Angles" that the word's form implies is not attested in English: the OED and Barnhart agree that it had already been lost at the first record,^[7][3] though Etymonline still glosses the Old English adjective that way.^[8]

Semantic evolution

From the earliest records the word covered all the Germanic settlers of Britain, Angles, Saxons and Jutes alike.^[3][10][14] The Romans and the Celts of Britain had usually called these settlers Saxons, but they eventually took the name of the Angles for themselves as a group; the OED finds this general use first in the Latin of Pope Gregory I, in 595.^[7] According to the OED, as quoted by Etymonline, "The name English for the language is thus older than the name England for the country".^[8] After the Norman Conquest of 1066 it meant the native population as distinct from the French or Normans, a distinction that faded within a generation or two;^[3][8] yet about 1300 Robert of Gloucester could still set the English in the north against the Saxons in the south.^[8][2] Chaucer used it as a noun for the language 25 times,^[15] and Skeat's glossary also records the power of eloquent expression in it.^[16] The verb, first for translating into English, was extended to putting something into plain terms, as in Shakespeare, and then to making something English in character.^[7][17] Johnson (1755) defined it as belonging to England, and thence the language of England.^[18] English as a school subject is recorded from 1713,^[7] and the count noun for a regional variety, which allows the plural Englishes, from 1910, in H. L. Mencken.^[7] In the United States the mid 19th century brought the billiards sense: Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad (1869) speaks of putting the "English" on the wrong side of the ball,^[12] and a verb from it followed in 1875.^[7][12]

Timeline

• c. 880 – adjective, of the English people.^[13][3]
• c. 890 – noun, the English language.^[3]
• Old English – the English people collectively, as in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle annal for 1066.^[7]
• Old English – a translation into English, in Ælfric (obsolete by 1862).^[7]
• 1340 – the English of a particular period, region or group.^[7]
• before 1397 – verb, to translate into English, in the Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible.^[3] The OED cites this text from a manuscript of before 1450.^[7]
• before 1616 – verb, to put into plain terms, in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor.^[7]
• 1711 – verb, to make English in character.^[7]
• 1713 – English as a subject of study.^[7]
• 1860 – spin put on a ball in billiards.^[8] Wilton's earliest quotation is from the Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer of 14 October 1861.^[12] The New Partridge dates it to 1869.^[19]
• 1868 – adjective, of a style of horse riding.^[7]
• 1875 – verb, to put spin on a ball.^[7][12]
• 1910 – a regional or specialized variety of English, as a count noun.^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or relating to England or its people or culture: an English village.^{[6][17][7][20]}
2. Of or relating to the English language: English spelling.^[6][7][20]
3. Of a plant or animal, native to or named after England, as distinct from related kinds found elsewhere.^[17][7]
4. (chiefly North American) Of a style of horse riding associated with events such as dressage and showjumping.^[7]

Noun

1. The West Germanic language of England, the United States and many other countries.^{[21][6][7][20]}
2. the English: the people of England.^[21][6][7]
3. The English of a particular period, region, group or person; in the plural, Englishes, its varieties around the world: the careful English of a court reporter.^[6][17][7]
4. English language or literature as a subject of study.^[7]
5. (North American) Spin given to a ball, especially in billiards or pool, to change its course: She put too much English on the cue ball.^[20][19][8]

Verb

1. To translate into English.^[17][7][8]
2. To adopt a foreign word into English, or to make something English in character; to anglicize.^[17][7]
3. (US, sport) To put spin on a ball.^[7]
4. (obsolete) To explain or describe in plain terms.^[17][4][7]

Word family

• Englishness
• un-English
• Englishman
• Englishwoman
• Englishry
• Englishly

Related words

• England
• Angle
• angler
• Anglo-
• Anglican
• Anglish

Usage notes

Etymonline quotes Fowler on the word's use for the whole of Britain: "when Scots & others are likely to be within earshot, Britain & British should be inserted as tokens, but no more, of what is really meant".^[8]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
6. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ a b Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
12. ^ a b c d e f Wilton, Dave, Wordorigins.org, wordorigins.org, p. "English, spin", 4 May 2026
13. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
16. ^ Skeat, W. W., ed. (1894), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. VI: Glossarial Index, Oxford: Clarendon Press
17. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
18. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
19. ^ a b Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
20. ^ a b c d Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
21. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins