Anglo-Saxons was imbued with meanings and acted as a symbol which would have been understood at the time. "Anglo-Saxon" in linguistics is still used as a term for the original West Germanic component of the modern English language, which was later expanded and developed through the influence of Old Norse and Norman French, though linguists now more often refer to it as Old English. Throughout the history of the Anglo-Saxons studies producing a dispassionate narrative of the people has been difficult. In the early Middle Ages the views of Geoffrey of Monmouth produced a personally inspired history that wasn't challenged for
Anglo-Norman language and French have led to many "faux amis" (words having similar form but different meanings) in Modern English and Modern French. Since although a Romance language, Norman contains a significant amount of lexical material from Norse, some of the words introduced into England as part of Anglo-Norman were of Germanic origin. Indeed, sometimes one can identify cognates such as "flock" (Germanic in English existing prior to the Conquest) and "floquet" (Germanic in Norman). The case of the word "mug" demonstrates that in instances, Anglo-Norman may have reinforced certain Scandinavian elements already present in English. "Mug" had been introduced into northern