English is made of Saxon words and Latin words. Here’s how to use them.

“There are two ways to say almost anything in English”, Ward Farnsworth writes in his extraordinary book Farnsworth’s Classical English Style. “With little words or big ones.” He goes on:

More precisely, you can say most things with older, shorter words that have Germanic (or “Saxon”) roots, or with longer words that came into the language more recently… from French, and before that from Latin.

He offers examples like make (Saxon) and create (Latin); light (Saxon) and illumination (Latin); burn (Saxon) and incinerate (Latin).

The history behind this is fascinating: the British isles were invaded around 450 A.D. by Anglia and Saxony—what is now northern Germany. Thus the origin of the term “Anglo-Saxon” (and “English”, originally “Ænglisc”). The invaders brought their Germanic (“Saxon”) tongue. But then:

About 600 years later the French invaded Britain, and they, too, brought their language with them… The new French competed with Old English, and the eventual outcome was a language — modern English — built out of both.

The “two registers” of English

The Argentine, surrealist writer Jorge Luis Borges refers to these—Saxon and Latin—as the “two registers” of English, and part of why he prefers the language to his native Spanish:

English is both a Germanic and a Latin language. Those two registers — for any idea you take, you have two words. Those words will not mean exactly the same. For example if I say “regal” that is not exactly the same thing as saying “kingly.” Or if I say “fraternal” that is not the same as saying “brotherly.” Or “dark” and “obscure.” Those words are different.

Farnsworth explains how this difference reflects history:

When French arrived in England it was the language of the conqueror and the new nobility. A thousand years later, words from French still connote a certain fanciness and distance from the gritty, and Saxon words still seem plainer, less formal, and closer to the earth.

One could describe this difference between the registers as simple (Saxon) vs. fancy (Latin)—or short (Saxon) vs. long (Latin). But these terms don’t entirely capture it.

Concrete vs. Abstract

Saxon words tend to be concrete—real, specific objects and actions—in a way that Latin words often aren’t. Latin words tend to be more conceptual, more abstract.

Again, this makes sense chronologically. Farnsworth:

As the conceptual life of English speakers became more sophisticated, they needed new words to talk about what they were thinking. They usually made them out of French or more directly from Latin or Greek. […] They allow a kind of precision (or facilitate a kind of jargon) that Saxon words cannot match.

This contrast between concrete and abstract words was identified in one of the first major style guides, The King’s English, published in 1906 by the Fowler brothers (the founding editors of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary).

One of their rules of good diction is to “Prefer the concrete word to the abstract”. And because Saxon words tend to be more concrete than Latin words, one of their other rules is to “Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance [Latin]”.

Farnsworth, again, perfectly expresses this distinction:

Saxon words tend to be easier to picture than the Latinate kind, most of which need a minor moment of translation before they appear in the mind’s eye.

In the language of user interface design, one might say there is a “friction” or “latency” associated with Latin words. They take a moment to process.

He goes on:

The difference between visual and conceptual is related to the ways that these kinds of words can speak to the different capacities of an audience. Latinate words tend to create distance from what they describe. They invite thought but not feeling. Saxon words are more visceral.

This is even more fascinating to me: the idea that the two registers target “different capacities of an audience”—feeling (Saxon) vs. thought (Latin). Different words can target either our lizard brain (Saxon), or our human brain (Latin). The origin of our words traces our intellectual development.

Winston Churchill knew this deeply. “The shorter words,” he says, “are usually the more ancient”. And “they appeal with greater force to simple understandings than words recently introduced from the Latin and the Greek”.

Churchill, probably using good, Saxon words.

“Abstractitis”

The Fowlers warn against overusing abstract, Latin words, precisely because they can make you hard to understand. In one of their later works, they jokingly coin the term “abstractitis” to refer to the “disease” of overusing abstract language.

Latin words can also, of course, sound pretentious—when their “precision”, instead, becomes jargon.

It will not surprise you that George Orwell had unique scorn for this:

Bad writers […] are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.

What’s more, sometimes Latin words are used this way because they are hard to understand. They “sound” dispassionate, and therefore levelheaded. They “sound” academic, and therefore smart.

This quality of Latin language can be “a feature, not a bug”. A dark pattern. As Farnsworth observes:

If you want to talk clinically about something distasteful, you use the Latinate word for it — the one derived from old French: terminate or execute (Latinate) instead of kill (Saxon).

This, specifically, is what George Orwell rails against in his scathing—and very funny—essay, Politics and the English Language.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside… this is called pacification.

“Pacification” being, of course, a Latin word. Such words, he says, are used “to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements”.

He gives another, satirical example of the Latin word salad he finds so pervasive:

a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods

Which he then skewers:

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. […] When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words… like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

The essay is a clear precursor to Orwell’s 1984 (published three years later), with many of his specific linguistic grievances parodied in Newspeak.

“Language”, he tells us, is “an instrument which we shape for our own purposes”.

“Let the meaning choose the word”

While the suggestion to “prefer Saxon words” is good advice, it’s not a cure-all. Orwell’s defense of the English language, he says, “is not concerned with fake simplicity”; “Nor does even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one”.

“What is above all needed,” he tells us, “is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about”, in order to determine “what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person”.

You can choose Saxon words that are quick to grasp and easy to feel, or Latin words that are detached and conceptual. Saxon words with “greater force”, or Latin words with “more precision”. Visceral, or cerebral.

And there are different impressions you can make by using one register, or the other, or both in combination.

The Power of Saxon Words

At times, you might want to make use of Saxon’s “ancient” and “greater force”, as Churchill put it. Naturally, most swear words are Saxon.

But Farnsworth provides a more lofty example:

The power of simple words is put on famous exhibit in the King James Bible. It contains many well-known verses that consist entirely of Saxon words, and sometimes just words of one syllable.

Such as:

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. (Gen. 1:3)
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32)

Farnsworth’s analysis is breathtaking:

Every word of those passages is Saxon. The gravity of their meaning matches the simplicity of their wording. Perhaps more precisely, the sense of weight is increased by the contrast between the size of the meanings and the size of the words. A big thing has been pressed into a small container. The result is a type of tension. It gets released in the mind of the reader.

“The Saxon Finish”

You can also use Saxon’s impact as a kind of payoff, a punchline to a passage that begins with more conceptual Latin words. Farnsworth calls this pattern “the Saxon finish”:

Starting with Latinate words creates a sense of height and abstraction. Ending with plain language brings the sentence onto land. The simplicity of the finish can also lend it a conclusive ring. And the longer words give the shorter ones a power, by force of contrast, that the shorter ones would not have had alone.

Among many evocative examples is a quote from Lincoln:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God.

As Farnsworth observes:

[Lincoln] especially liked to circle with larger words early in a sentence and then finish it simply. The pattern allowed him to offer intellectual or idealistic substance and then tie it to a stake in the dirt.

“The Latin Finish”

You can also use the reverse pattern: starting with Saxon words, and then finishing with Latin ones. Farnsworth:

A frequent product of this pattern is a sense of compression released. Moving from Saxon to Latinate words makes the first part of a sentence feel compact, the rest expansive. The last part thus gains a kind of push.

A classic example from the Good Book:

The way of the Lord is strength to the upright: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity. (Prov. 10:29)

Farnsworth:

[T]he good and the strong are described in simple words. The long words are reserved for the villains.

“The Saxon Restatement”

Sometimes it can help to state an idea simply, and then conceptually. The “Saxon Restatement”, as Farnsworth calls it, is to:

[S]ay roughly the same thing first in Saxon words and then in Latinate words (or the other way around) […] the pattern can serve a strong rhetorical function by helping to stimulate both feeling and thought.

Churchill:

I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind.

It’s a one-two punch: hitting you first in the gut, and then in the mind. Churchill used this technique constantly.

Humor

The above are just some of the patterns Farnsworth identifies, but there are others: using crude words as a punchline (“over my dead body”), or using Latin ones for irony:

He did not run away, he executed a strategic movement to the rear.
—Churchill, again

Rhythm

By moving between the “two poles” of Saxon and Latin, one can create rhythm and energy. Tension and release. As Farnsworth notes:

The Saxon words create feeling and convey simplicity and sincerity. They hit home. The Latinate words evoke thought and connect the images to concepts and ideals. The sound and tone of each balances the sound and tone of the other.

But ultimately:

“No one cares about etymology”

Despite all his exhaustive research and his painstaking identification of all these rhetorical patterns, Farnsworth observes that:

These features of Saxon and Latinate words are just tendencies. Some Latinate words, such as brave or fact or catch or count, sound Saxon. So it’s a mistake to go hunting for a Saxon word. It isn’t always easy to tell which words are which; if you want a word that has Saxon qualities, you are better off just picking one that is simple and concrete rather than fussing over its etymology — for no one cares about its etymology.

However:

[T]he origins of words are still helpful and interesting to grasp because they help explain why words have the sound they do.

Transmit meaning

The purpose of a piece of writing is to transmit meaning to the reader; so the writer’s job is to make the meaning easy to understand, and to keep demands on the reader — the “cognitive load” — to a minimum.

Cognitive load is related to novelty and complexity, as I’ve written about before. There are many aspects of language that contribute to novelty and complexity — unfamiliar or abstract words, roundabout phrasing, sentence length. Thus the many recommendations to avoid these, and to write simply and clearly; because without understanding, nothing else can follow.

But though efficiency is the most important value in most kinds of writing, it isn’t the only value.

You do need some novelty and complexity to keep an audience engaged. Language isn’t just about transmitting meaning — it’s about keeping an audience’s interest through style and subject matter. And using words that stir their hearts or minds.

Make an impression

As Orwell put it, language is a tool, an “instrument” to make “an impression on another person” — in feeling or in thought. Alan Moore considers writing a kind of magic; by manipulating words, “you can change people’s consciousness”. Stephen King calls it “an act of telepathy”. Or Lincoln:

Writing — the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye — is the great invention of the world… enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and of space[.]

By choosing old words or new ones, we continue this conversation from the ancient past into the future. From powerful feelings, to precise concepts.

English is made of Saxon words and Latin words. Use them both. Wisely.