Anglish

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A proposed variety of English that replaces Latin and French loanwords with words built from older Germanic roots
2. A purist form of the English language that favors native Old English vocabulary over words borrowed from Latin or French
3. The English tongue rewritten with home-grown Germanic terms in place of words derived from Latin, Greek, or French

Etymology: Paul Jennings, a British humorist, coined "Anglish" in 1966 as a jocular name for an imagined English stripped of its Latin and French vocabulary. He wrote it in the magazine Punch, where the joke was that the language would be rebuilt entirely from Old English stock, so that a word like "lecture" would be replaced by something built from native parts. The word itself is built from "Angle," the Germanic people who, alongside the Saxons and Jutes, settled Britain and gave England its name, plus the suffix "-ish," which means "of or relating to." The base comes from Old English "Engle" (the Angles) with the adjective ending "-isċ," so the joke is in the name: it is "English" with its roots pushed back to the Angles. The word is a doublet of "English," meaning the two forms descend from the same source but have separated into distinct words with distinct uses.