Loanwords in Early Modern English borrowed from polysemous French items

In contemporary contexts, monosemous borrowing appears to be the normal case (Winter-Froemel 2014: 73). It was found by Ingham (2021) that the majority outcome in Middle English was for multiple senses of a French etymon to be borrowed, however. The explanation offered was that the context for borrowing in Middle English was one of extensive bilingualism practised by the educated classes. Since that context came to an end after the 14th century, the prediction is made here that polysemous borrowing sharply declined in the Early Modern English period. Two samples of 16th and 17th century loans from French into English are analysed so as to validate this prediction. Data drawn from a comparison of entries in the Dictionnaire du Moyen Français and the OED’s Historical Thesaurus of English show a marked reduction in loan polysemy in this period. It is proposed that the context in which borrowing occurs exerts a decisive influence on the range of senses adopted by the borrowing language. The borrowing process in the EModEng period is hypothesised to have operated by adapting into English items encountered in written form by individuals with a reading ability in French, rather than a communicative setting requiring spoken proficiency.