Abstract
This article claims that there are major problems with existing classifications of Latin loanwords into Old English. These deficiencies spring not so much from the paucity of the Old English linguistic record, as a comparison with several much better documented Finnish loans into Modern English shows, but rather from methodological imprecision, which results in many lexical items being too hastily labelled with the umbrella term "lexical loan". Alternative terms are suggested for the twelve Finnish and six Old English words investigated in the article, based on their frequency, integration, the registers that they belong to, and the historical and cultural developments that they document.
Timofeeva, Olga