“Dedicated to such absurd ideas as keeping French products, French dancing masters, French garlic and French “frickasees” out of a proper plain beef-eating nation...”There used to be a movement called Saxonism which wanted to turn English back to a Germanic language. The tiresome sods wanted everyone to say “sunprint” instead of “photograph”; “tonewright” for “composer”; “birdlore” for “ornithology”; “bendsome” instead of “flexible”.
But there is no Saxon word for vol-au-vent and the movement collapsed in ignominy. And you have to admit that French phrases have a certain I-don’t-know-what. Saxonism got nowhere.
