late Latin Germanus, a member of the Germanic peoples. Most of the obvious similarities between the German and English languages result from their common descent from a Germanic language spoken in prehistoric times, which in turn was a descendant of the prehistoric Indo-European language. Although the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066 introduced many French words into English, a significant number of these were actually of Germanic origin: cramp, crush, flatter, feud, fresh, frock, garden, helmet, roast, scale, stout, and so on. Borrowings from German that have passed into English since the 16th cent. include hamster, lager, marzipan, meerschaum, plunder, poltergeist, poodle, quartz, seminar, spanner, veneer, and zinc. Events in the first half of the 20th cent. produced further borrowings such as blitz, flak, führer, putsch, and strafe