PROUD - pg. 374, The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology
By Walter W. Skeat (1993 edition) > http://books.google.com/books?id=aDhGlKL3h00C&pg=PA374&lpg=PA374&dq=proud+etymology&source=bl&ots=t4ARe42fOi&sig=cHcrOGgJEArMfakViRLZdzUB1no&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LoleUNvRIITzyAHn5IGYCw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=proud%20etymology&f=false

O.E. prȳde and O.N. prȳthi are akin to one another from O.E. prūd, prūt and O.N. prūðr < maybe from "Vulgar Latin" through French? Now, set this against O.Fr. prud, prod "gallant" < L.L. prōde "useful" < L. prōdesse "to be of worth"

www.etymonline.com says, "The sense of "have a high opinion of oneself," not found in Old French, might reflect the Anglo-Saxons' opinion of the Norman knights who called themselves "proud."" This same website puts forth that the Norse may have gotten the word O.N. prūðr from the same seeming Vulgar Latin word as O.E. I am yet far from won over though. Any thoughts out there?

"I was thinking that most lede are not worried about word-roots, they just want to be understood clearly and get on with their lives."

Sadly, you are right. Most folks have forgotten what it means to holdfast their folkways. As I have always said, "Sprache ist Traeger der Kultur." If the lede were more aware and had more pride, it would've been harder to muddle English with all of the fremd words. I give you Iceland and France as today's standard bearers.

"Hmm but wouldn't 'transit lounge', or 'bus station' be an everyday word?"

Yes, although bus station seems more 'everyday' to me. Bus Stop is even better.

French General (retired) Stanislas Baudry founded horse-drawn Omnibus bus lines. The name comes from his first such undertaking in Nantes in 1823 - one of his bus line's stops was in front of a hat-maker's shop owned by a fellow oddly named Omnés. The stop, called "Omnes Omnibus" was a pun on the Latin sounding name of that hatter Omnès and Omnibus; Omnibus means "for all" in Latin. The omnibus was brought to England from France in 1829.

There was no Germanic word for the brainchild called an omnibus.

"Because so many have disappeared, become lost, and are no longer in a modern wordbook."

Between the O.E., M.E. and wordbooks of today, among other things, we likely have enough writings to find the lost words of which you speak. I see no roadblock here.

@jayles:

To my mind, the same is not brought into play. Let's look at the words you brought up...

CHAIR (abt.1250) M.E. cha(i)ere "a stool to sit on; a seat of office or authority" < O.Fr. chaiere < L. cathēdra "seat" < O.Gk kathedra "seat"

APPLY (abt. 1350) M.E. ap(p)lien < Anglo-French, Old French ap(p)lier < Latin applicāre < ap (ad- before 'p') "toward" + ply (from plicāre) "to fold" = In English, "to fold toward"

My main thought against these words is that they are both after 1066. CHAIR began to take over from stool (O.E. stōl), settle (M.E. setle < O.E. setl, akin to saddle; see G. Sessel), and seat (O.N. sæti "seat") in earnest about the 1400's. Anyway, I would say that 'chair' seems much more deeply rooted in British English than say American English. It seems to me that this is found more in government.

APPLY, too, is highly academic, no? Can English not live without this word? I think so. There are many ways to say "apply." I guess my thought is that those words that were borrowed from Latin so long ago likely didn't have a Germanic match. Ænglisc has/had words for all, or most, of the fremd borrowings from Latin & Norman-French. What are the true Ænglisc words for 'cheese', 'wine', and 'kitchen'? To me, CHAIR, APPLY, and other Norman-French/ Latin words do not hold the same worth.

WELKIN "the sky" < ME welken < OE wolc(e)n < PGmc *welk-, *wulknan, *wulkō, *wulkô "sky, clouds, heavens"; akin to German Wolken.

" Regn wolcen brincgeþ"

Unaddling >> "...in the thirteenth century [ an Icelandic writer wrote] that up to the time of William the Bastard the language of England was one and the same as that in Norway and Denmark"

"Why are words borrowed after that not good English? But those borrowed before are?"

I never said, or hinted, that borrowed words after the year 450 were not good English. There were many Latin words that flooded into the tongue in the year 597, and those would be thought of as "good English", if one is Christian. Also, since Christianity became meshed wholly into the lives of early English folks, these words would take on an inborn meaning for them over time, too.

The Vikings began coming to England about the year 800, and by year 1100, English had already warped into "Anglo-Scandinavian", as put forth in "The Vikings in Britain" by Professor H.R. Loyn. He wrote:

"...in the thirteenth century that up to the time of William the Bastard the
language of England was one and the same as that in Norway and Denmark, and that it was only after his conquest that there was a change...By 1100 the very nature of the English language itself in the east and north had been profoundly modified to the point where it is not unreasonable to call it Anglo-Scandinavian; and it was from the language patterns of eastern England that the main lines of standard modern English were ultimately to develop." pp. 114-115, "The Vikings in Britain" (1977)

I'm okay with all of the Scandinavian borrowings, too. Old Norse and Old English are near enough that likely a Viking and an Anglo-Saxon could talk to each other and be well understood.

Not all loans and borrowings are bad for English, but the way I see it, most of them have been.

I think the best thing to look at settle on what is true English are the EVERYDAY WORDS. Most of these, I think, should be thought of as true English.

"what happened at 450 which is so important?"

This is thought to be about the time when English began to come together as a tongue. This "first Ænglisc" already had some fifty Latin borrowings from when these "Ængliscmenn" were still on the homeland.

These Latin words have truly become woven into Ænglisc owing to their meaning and high standing in the daily lives of the Ænglisc folk.