The surviving vocabulary of Old English (OE) is relatively small. The Thesaurus of Old English (TOE),contains almost 34,000 different word forms, whereas a modern desk dictionary might contain 80,000.
Much of the vocabulary of Mod. E. derives from OE. Examples include the natural world (earth, sea, wind, fire, water; sun, moon, star); people (man, woman, child, father, mother, brother, daughter); the body (hand, arm, elbow, finger, foot, nose, mouth); and other basic concepts such as food, drink; heaven, hell; friend, neighbour; love, good, evil; hot, cold; after, over, under.
The examples above are all typical of OE words in being one or two syllables in length. Where there are two syllables, the stress is on the first. Initial stress is a characteristic feature of the Germanic languages as a group and remains the most common type of word structure in Mod. E. We have also retained from OE many of the ways of making new words, but at the same time English has borrowed numerous words from other languages, notably French and Latin. Thousands of French words were brought into English after the Norman Conquest of 1066. New words occur especially in fields where Norman influence was strongest, such as Law, Literature and Fashion.
