adjective
- Of, relating to, or characteristic of England or its people or culture.
- Of or relating to the English language.
noun
- used with a pl. verb The people of England.
a. The West Germanic language of England, the United States, and other countries that are or have been under English influence or control.
b. The English language of a particular time, region, person, or group of persons: American English.
- A translation into or an equivalent in the English language.
- A course or individual class in the study of English language, literature, or composition.
- also english
a. The spin given to a propelled ball by striking it on one side or releasing it with a sharp twist.
b. Bodily movement in an effort to influence the movement of a propelled object; body English.
transitive verb
Eng·lished, Eng·lish·ing, Eng·lish·es - To translate into English.
- To adapt into English; Anglicize.
Origin of English
Middle English
from Old English
Englisc from Engle the Angles Related Forms:
Word History: English is derived from
England, one would think. But in fact the language name is found long before the country name. The latter first appears as
Englaland around the year 1000 and means “the land of the
Engle ,” that is, the Angles. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were the three Germanic tribes that emigrated from what is now Denmark and northern Germany and settled in England around the fourth century AD. Early on, the Angles enjoyed a rise to power that must have made them seem more important than the other two tribes, for all three tribes are indiscriminately referred to in early documents as Angles. The speech of the three tribes was conflated in the same way: they all spoke what would have been called
*Anglisc, or “Anglish,” as it were. By the earliest recorded Old English, this had changed to
Englisc. In Middle English, the first vowel, originally pronounced (ĕ) in Old English, changed further and became the familiar (ĭ) of today, as reflected in the occasional spellings
Ingland and
Inglish. The same change in the pronunciation of the short vowel (ĕ) to (ĭ) before the sound (ng) also occurred in other Middle English words, such as
streng and
weng. In Modern English, these words are now always spelled
string and
wing with an
i, but the old spelling with
e, reflecting the vowel's earlier pronunciation, has been kept in the case of
England and
English. British
