English evolved from the Anglo-Saxon tongues spoken by the Germanic tribes--Angli, Saxons, Frisians, Jutes--whose conscripts among the Roman legions had visited Britain (later, Angleland, or England) and found it inviting. They came around 410, the year Rome fell to the Visigoths and the Emperor Honorius decided from the safety of Ravenna that outposts like Britain were on their own. With the Romans gone, the incoming Germanics blended with the indigenous Celts, and so did their languages: into Old English and its earthy words ("dream," "water," "strong," "today," and "bread" derive from OE). So matters stood until William the Conqueror invaded in 1066 and brought along a language spoken at court: Anglo-Norman, a dialect of French nobilityspeak thick with Latin words transplanted from the Roman Empire and its warlike clerics. Eventually Anglo-Norman mixed with Old English to make Middle English (the language of Chaucer), but during the Renaissance, renewed interest in classical science and scholarship summoned another wave of Latinisms. With these and an infusion of Greek terms in place, English grew standardized with help from the printing press. Today only about one-sixth of it is homegrown, the rest imported from other languages. Surrounded by the cogs and wheels of the Industrial Revolution, capitalists and scientists coined more new words from Greek and Latin formations that lent themselves to abstraction, classification, and measurement. Hence the need for glossaries like this one. (For one more item, see Inkhorn. )