The next wave of innovation in English vocabulary came with the revival of classical scholarship known as the Renaissance. The English Renaissance roughly covers the 16th and early 17th Century (the European Renaissance had begun in Italy as early as the 14th Century), and is often referred to as the “Elizabethan Era” or the “Age of Shakespeare” after the most important monarch and most famous writer of the period. The additions to English vocabulary during this period were deliberate borrowings, and not the result of any invasion or influx of new nationalities or any top-down decrees.

Latin (and to a lesser extent Greek) was still very much considered the language of education and scholarship at this time, and the great enthusiasm for the classical languages during the English Renaissance brought thousands of new words into the language, peaking around 1600. A huge number of classical works were being translated into English during the 16th Century, and many new terms were introduced where a satisfactory English equivalent did not exist.

Words from Latin or Greek (often via Latin) were imported wholesale, either intact (e.g. genius, species, militia, radius, specimen, criterion, squalor, apparatus, focus, tedium, lens, antenna, paralysis, nausea, etc) or, more commonly, slightly altered (e.g. horrid, pathetic, iilicit, pungent, frugal, anonymous, dislocate, explain, excavate, meditate, adapt, enthusiasm, absurdity, area, complex, concept, invention, technique, temperature, capsule, premium, system, expensive, notorious, gradual, habitual, insane, ultimate, agile, fictitious, physician, anatomy, skeleton, orbit, atmosphere, catastrophe, parasite, manuscript, lexicon, comedy, tragedy, anthology, fact, biography, mythology, sarcasm, paradox, chaos, crisis, climax, etc). A whole category of words ending with the Greek-based suffixes “-ize” and “-ism” were also introduced around this time. Sometimes, Latin-based adjectives were introduced to plug "lexical gaps" where no adjective was available for an existing Germanic noun (e.g. marine for sea, pedestrian for walk), or where an existing adjective had acquired unfortunate connotations (e.g. equine or equestrian for horsey, aquatic for watery), or merely as an additional synonym (e.g. masculine and feminine in addition to manly and womanly, paternal in addition to fatherly, etc).

Some scholars adopted Latin terms so excessively and awkwardly at this time that the derogatory term “inkhorn” was coined to describe pedantic writers who borrowed the classics to create obscure and opulent terms, many of which have not survived. Examples of inkhorn terms include revoluting, ingent, devulgate, attemptate, obtestate, fatigate, deruncinate, subsecive, nidulate, abstergify, arreption, suppeditate, eximious, illecebrous, cohibit, dispraise and other such inventions. The so-called Inkhorn Controversy was the first of several such ongoing arguments over language use which began to erupt in the salons of England (and, later, America). Among those strongly in favour of the use of such "foreign" terms in English were Thomas Elyot and George Pettie; just as strongly opposed were Thomas Wilson and John Cheke.

However, it is interesting to note that some words initially branded as inkhorn terms have stayed in the language and now remain in common use (e.g. dismiss, disagree, celebrate, encyclopaedia, commit, industrial, affability, dexterity, superiority, external, exaggerate, extol, necessitate, expectation, mundane, capacity and ingenious). An indication of the arbitrariness of this process is that impede survived while its opposite, expede, did not; commit and transmit were allowed to continue, while demit was not; and disabuse and disagree survived, while disaccustom and disacquaint, which were coined around the same time, did not. It is also sobering to realize that some of the greatest writers in the language have suffered from the same vagaries of fashion and fate. Not all of Shakespeare’s many creations have stood the test of time, including barky, brisky, conflux, exsufflicate, ungenitured, unhair, questrist, cadent, perisive, abruption, appertainments, implausive, vastidity and tortive. Likewise, Ben Jonson’s ventositous and obstufact died a premature death, and John Milton’s impressive inquisiturient has likewise not lasted.

There was even a self-conscious reaction to this perceived foreign incursion into the English language, and some writers tried to deliberately resurrect older English words (e.g. gleeman for musician, sicker for certainly, inwit for conscience, yblent for confused, etc), or to create wholly new words from Germanic roots (e.g. endsay for conclusion, yeartide for anniversary, foresayer for prophet, forewitr for prudence, loreless for ignorant, gainrising for resurrection, starlore for astronomy, fleshstrings for muscles, grosswitted for stupid, speechcraft for grammar, birdlore for ornithology, etc). Most of these were also short-lived. John Cheke even made a valiant attempt to translate the entire "New Testament" using only native English words.

The 17th Century penchant for classical language also influenced the spelling of words like debt and doubt, which had a silent “b” added at this time out of deference to their Latin roots (debitum and dubitare respectively). For the same reason, island gained its silent “s”, scissors its “c”, anchor, school and herb their “h”, people its “o” and victuals gained both a “c” and a “u”. In the same way, Middle English perfet and verdit became perfect and verdict (the added “c” at least being pronounced in these cases), faute and assaut became fault and assault, and aventure became adventure. However, this perhaps laudable attempt to bring logic and reason into the apparent chaos of the language has actually had the effect of just adding to the chaos. Its cause was not helped by examples such the “p” which was added to the start of ptarmigan with no etymological justification whatsoever other than the fact that the Greek word for feather, ptera, started with a "p".

Whichever side of the debate one favours, however, it is fair to say that, by the end of the 16th Century, English had finally become widely accepted as a language of learning, equal if not superior to the classical languages. Vernacular language, once scorned as suitable for popular literature and little else - and still criticized throughout much of Europe as crude, limited and immature - had become recognized for its inherent qualities.