Definition:
Showy, affected, or pretentious language. In particular, an unusual, often lengthy word intended to impress readers or listeners.
In A History of English Words (2000), Geoffrey Hughes points to an ironic instance in "Ben Jonson's prescription in Discoveries (1641) that 'the chief virtue of style is perspicuity' (by which inkhorn term he also meant 'clarity')."
See also:
Etymology:
From the Middle English, a small container made of horn used to hold inkExamples and Observations:
- "The most ancient English wordes are of one syllable, so that the more monosyllables that you use the truer Englishman you shall seem, and the less you shall smell of the Inkhorne."
(George Gascoigne, Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Rhyme in English, 1575) - "One of the well-known attacks on inkhorn terms is in Thomas Wilson's Art of Rhetoric [1560]. In the section on style he recommends plainness as a quality for an orator to cultivate. The first thing to learn, he says, is to avoid all strange inkhorn terms, and to speak as is commonly received. . . .
"Some of the words [in Wilson's letter] from before 1500 may be inkhorn terms, especially those from the fifteenth century. In that period some writers adopted an 'aureate' style, a highly ornamented literary style which used high-flown words. Some of the fifteenth-century words in the letter are loans from French like condign adj., promotion n., and relinquish v., and these may well be inkhorn terms. But many of the fifteenth-century words are from Latin. Moreover, a number of them are rather rare words, like contiguate p.p./adj., ingent adj., and splendidious, adj., and so probably inkhorn terms. It seems, therefore, that for Wilson an inkhorn word was most often a loan from Latin."
(Charles Barber, Early Modern English. Edinburgh University Press, 1981)
- Thomas Nash's Condemnation of Gabriel Harvey's "Inkhornism" (1592)
"The floures of your Foure Letters it may be I haue ouerlookt more narrowlie, and done my best deuoire to assemble them together into patheticall posie, which I will here present to Maister Orator Edge for a Newyeares gift, leauing them to his wordie discretion to be censured, whether they be currant in inkehornisme or no.
Conscious mind: canicular tales: egregious an argument; when as egregious is neuer used in english but in the extreame ill part. Ingenuitie: Iouiall mind: valarous Authors: inckehorne aduentures: inckehornepads: putatiue opinions: putatiue artists: energeticall persuasions: Rascallitie: materiallitie: artificiallitie: Fantasticallitie: diuine Entelechy: loud Mentery: deceitfull perfidy: addicted to Theory: the worlds great Incendiarie: sirenized furies: soueraigntie immense: abundant Cauteles: cautelous and aduentrous: cordiall liquor: Catilinaries and Phillipicks: perfunctorie discourses: Dauids sweetnes olimpique: the Idee high and deepe Abisse of excellence: The only Vnicorne of the Muses: the Aretinish mountaine of huge exaggerations: The gratious law of Amnesty: amicable termes: amicable end: Effectuate: addoulce his melodie: Magy: polimechany: extensiuely emploid: precious Traynment: Nouellets: Notorietie: negotiation: mechanician."
(Thomas Nash, from Four Letters Confuted, 1592) - Gabriel Harvey's Response to Thomas Nash (1593)
"He is of no reading in comparison, that doth not acknowledge every term in those letters to be authentical English, and allow a thousand other ordinary pragmatical terms more strange than the strangest in those letters, yet current at occasion. The ignorant ideot (for so I will prove him in very truth) confuteth the artificial words which he never read; but the vain fellow (for so he proveth himself in word and deed), in a fantastical emulation presumeth to forge a mishapen rabblement of absurd and ridiculous words, the proper bodges of his new-fangled figure, called Foolrisme: such as inkhornism, Absonism, the most copious Carminist, thy Carminical art, a Providitore of young scholars, a Corrigidore of incongruity, a quest of Cavalieros, Inamoratos on their works, a Theological Gimpanado, a Dromidote Ergonist, sacrilegiously contaminated, decrepit capacity, fictionate person, humour unconversable, merriments unexilable, the horrisonant pipe of inveterate antiquity; and a number of such inkhornish phrases, as it were a pan of outlandish collops, the very bowels of his profoundest scholarism."
(Gabriel Harvey, Pierce's Supererogation, or A New Praise of the Old Ass, 1593)
Pronunciation: INGK-horn term
Also Known As: inkhorn word, pedantic term