The Inkhorn Contorversy

Writers of the Renaissance began coining new words to expand the vocabulary. They borrowed from classical languages such as Latin and Greek and the romance languages French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. The 'Inkhorn controversy' refers to a heated discussion of whether it was proper to borrow words from other languages and use them in English. People believed that foreign borrowing into English was pretentious and unnecessary. However, some believed it enabled creativity for example Shakespeare who introduced around 1700 new words. Those against borrowing believed that it would 'corrupt' the English Language as the neologisms were seen as fashionable and likely to fall out of use.