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(speakers of a now-extinct East Germanic language) sack Rome. The first Germanic tribes arrive in Britain.
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Baptized. He is the first English king to convert to Christianity.
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the Saxon kingdoms of Essex and Middlesex; the Angle kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria. St. Augustine and Irish missionaries convert Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, introducing new religious words borrowed from Latin and Greek. Latin speakers begin referring to the country as Anglia and later as Englaland
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Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English.
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declares himself overlord of Ireland, introducing Norman French and English to the country. About this time the University of Oxford is founded.
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King John loses control of the Duchy of Normandy and other French lands; England is now the only home of the Norman French/English.
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Johannes Gutenberg is usually cited as the inventor of the printing press. Indeed, the German goldsmith's 15th-century contribution to the technology was revolutionary — enabling the mass production of books and the rapid dissemination of knowledge throughout Europe.
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In his Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, Andrew Boorde illustrates regional dialects.
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Thomas Wilson publishes The Art of Rhetorique, one of the first works on logic and rhetoric in English.
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William Shakespeare writes his Sonnets and the majority of his plays.
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"against the grain," a metaphor from brushing the hair of an animal the opposite way to which it lies. [Romeo and Juliet]
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Exactly as it sounds, bedward means heading for bed. Who doesn’t like heading bedward after a hard day?
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very boring person, person who has no character.