AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 2/ caused constructions or changes in the meaning of words. It is on this account that many words which otherwise would have been lost are pre- served. Some such words became, so to say, sanctified, and the contemporaneous language, in order not to use these words for profane meaning, was obliged to supply corresponding ones. A Greek will not name, for instance, bread and wine, when spoken of as being used in church, by the names il'ioixi and xpa<7i^ which words are of the people's and not of the literary and the church language, like some others used when spoken of as sacred, rrapdi^oi, the virgin, otherwise xopczffi, xopa<nd. In addition to this aversion against popular language it came about that this despised language was spoken, and, of course, badly spoken, by men who them- selves were much hated by the orthodox Greeks. At the time when the Turks conquered Crete and had all Greece under their oppressive con- trol, the Greeks commenced to contemplate how to regain their liberty and independence. A factor in favor of the preservation of the pure literary language during the Turkish reign was that in all the Greek colonies, in Venice, in Moldavia and Wallachia, in Joannina, in Con- stantinople, in Smyrna, in Jerusalem, in Bu-
