英语在若干世纪的发展过程中,不断兼收并蓄了许多其他语种的词语,而成为世界上词汇最丰富、同义词最多的一个语种。即使在十一世纪中叶诺曼人入侵以前,盎格鲁—撒克逊语汇中就已经有了很多外来词汇。比如来自拉丁语的street(街道)、 English has become a language with the most abundant words and most synonyms in the world in the course of centuries of development. Even before the Norman invasion in the mid-eleventh century, many foreign words already existed in the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. For example, from Latin street (street)