ome from Italian. Addison wrote an article in
No. 165 of the _Spectator_ ridiculing the Frenchified character of the
military language of his time, and, in the 16th century, Henri Estienne,
patriot, printer, and philologist, lamented that future historians would
believe, from the vocabulary employed, that France had learnt the art of
war from Italy. As a matter of fact she did. The earliest writers on the
new tactics necessitated by villainous saltpetre were Italians trained
in condottiere warfare. They were followed by the great French theorists
and engineers of the 16th and 17th centuries, who naturally adopted a
large number of Italian terms which thus passed later into English.

A considerable number of Spanish and Portuguese words have reached us in
a very roundabout way (see pp. 23-7). This is not surprising when we
consider how in the 15th and 16th centuries the world was dotted with
settlements due to the Portuguese and Spanish adventurers who had a
hundred years' start of our own.

There are very few Celtic words either in English or French. In each
country the result of conquest was, from the point of view of language,
complete. A few words from the Celtic languages have percolated into
English in comparatively recent times, but many terms which we associate
with the picturesque Highlanders are not Gaelic at all.[18] _Tartan_
comes through French from the _Tartars_ (see p. 47); _kilt_ is a
Scandinavian verb, "to tuck up," and _dirk_,[19] of unknown origin,
first appears about 1600. For _trews_ see p. 117.

A very interesting part of our vocabulary, the _canting_, or rogues',
language, dates mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries, and includes
contributions from most of the European languages, together with a large
Romany element. The early dictionary makers paid great attention to this
aspect of the language. Elisha Coles, who published a fairly complete
English dictionary in 1676, says in his preface, "'Tis no disparagement
to understand the canting terms: it may chance to save your throat from
being cut, or (at least), your pocket from being pick'd."

Words often go long journeys. _Boss_ is in English a comparatively
modern Americanism. But, like many American words, it belongs to the
language of the Dutch settlers who founded New Amsterdam (New York). It
is Du. _baas_, master, which has thus crossed the Atlantic twice on its
way from Holland to England. A number of Dutch words became familiar to
us abou