entry
english
/ˈɪŋ.ɡlɪʃ/Of England; its language
From O.English / Germanic ethnonym engle (the Angles).
Word Ancestry
This word began as a tribe name, not a language name. The Angles were one of the Germanic groups that drifted into Britain after the 5th century, and their label, Engle, was pressed into service as Englisc for their speech. That means the language got its name before the country did — a delicious little historical mismatch that still survives in modern English, which is why English can mean both a nation’s people and the language they speak. After 1066, the word even had a brief identity crisis, marking native English people off from Norman French rulers. Somewhere in the background is the old story that Angul, their Jutland home, was shaped like a fishhook; if that’s true, the language of England may have begun as the name of a hooked-up coastline.
The Story
This word began as a tribe name, not a language name. The Angles were one of the Germanic groups that drifted into Britain after the 5th century, and their label, Engle, was pressed into service as Englisc for their speech. That means the language got its name before the country did — a delicious little historical mismatch that still survives in modern English, which is why English can mean both a nation’s people and the language they speak. After 1066, the word even had a brief identity crisis, marking native English people off from Norman French rulers. Somewhere in the background is the old story that Angul, their Jutland home, was shaped like a fishhook; if that’s true, the language of England may have begun as the name of a hooked-up coastline.
Kin & Kindred
From 'engle'·the Angles; by extension, English, of England
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Free Dictionary
Urban Dictionary
Wiktionary