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3.2.2. The Late Modern English period (1700-1900) 
The late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are recognised as the period of the 
Restoration and the Age of Reason. In this historical moment, the return of the French 
influence with Charles II led to the emergence of a national feeling among the population 
towards the vernacular language. Therefore, the need of a refined and purified style for 
the English language was defended, and scholars stood up for native words against 
foreign elements. 

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3.2.2.1. The doctrine of correctness 
While in the previous centuries copy was the quality that scholars sought for in the 
language, clarity of expression was from the mid seventeenth century onwards the most 
valued one, which resulted in a drop in the number of borrowings introduced in the 
eighteenth century (Durkin 2014: 308). Durkin (2014: 308) gives two possible reasons 
for this delay concerning the suspension of large borrowing: “the continuing growth of 
specialist technical vocabulary and of distinct stylistic registers […], and the further 
growth of existing word families.” The decline of borrowing was even greater as a result 
of the new stage of the standardisation process that took place in the eighteenth century, 
codification, the usage of Latinate lexis being restricted to formal and elevated styles of 
language, or to more restrictive vocabularies associated with technical fields (Durkin 
2014: 308-309).
Many scholars, especially grammarians and orthoepists, tried to fix the language by 
following their own rules. This is how the “doctrine of correctness” began. The aim was 
to turn English into a perfectly regular language, just like the way in which Latin was 
perceived. The main motive for this regularisation was the emergence of the common 
idea about the language undergoing degeneration, as Latin did after its “golden age” 
(although scholars did not agree in which moment to set the English “golden age”). The 
many linguistic changes taking place in the previous century (both concerning the 
borrowing of elements from other languages, such as Latin, and the free conversion of 
words from a class to another) were considered to be the reason for this degeneration. 
Even though scholars discovered that English, compared to Latin, lacked order in 
grammatical terms, the attempts to establish a fixed language did not stop (Sheard 1970: 
302-303). In any case, as Sheard pointed out (1970: 303) 
[t]his desire to give English a polished, rational, and authoritative form, 
similar to that of Latin, led to the attempt to settle all disputed points either 
by appeal to authority, which at first meant Latin authority, or by reasoned 
argument, and eventually to the demand for a law-giving body, an Academy 
which should have authority first to purify the language, and then fix it in its 
final perfect form.

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The result of this cleansing and purifying process was that of an impoverishment in the 
vocabulary, as stated by Sheard (1970: 303-304), since the authorities intended to ban 
and extinct the use of a great amount of words and expressions. As a consequence of this 
purification of the language, Latin borrowings introduced in the period of the Renaissance 
were examined. The highly-Latinised vocabulary of the sixteenth century started to be, 
thus, purged, since in many cases it was found to be unnecessary, and the same happened 
with many of other foreign languages, such as French (Sheard 1970: 304). Writers were 
more interested in finding native means to achieve classical effects, rather than on 
remodelling English according to Latin forms (Adamson 1999: 596).
While many old native words were recovered, dictionaries appeared as a way of fixing 
the language, and, although in the early seventeenth century they were merely lists of 
“hard words”, in the eighteenth century English words belonging to the general 
vocabulary were included, as the standard was being created (Sheard 1970: 307-309). In 
spite of the attempts to purify the language, scientists were rather interested on 
intelligibility, so words composed of Latin (or Greek) and English elements continued to 
be introduced in the language as science advanced, since most of those words that were 
available in the two classical languages had already been borrowed (Sheard 1970: 264).