[Raymann]

We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. --James D. Nicoll

[freedomfiter2]

We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. --James D. Nicoll

Excellent quote. My point wasn't that we should speak only pure english, but that adding "fetus" to our vocabulary wasn't done to improve understanding but rather to obscure it.

[Verginius Rufus]

"Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it."

--Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch. XII.

If English ever has to return all the words it has "borrowed" from other languages, we're going to be in a heap of trouble.