This paper will consider the development of the English language as reflected in, and effected by, literary works of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Its starting-point will be the first rendering in English of the classical theory of invention in Stephen Hawes' 'Passetyme of Pleasure' (c.1506). In practice Hawes' work so confuses invention and elocution that the writer's matter is shown to be largely dependent upon his choice of words, and 'invention' takes on something of its now current sense of inventiveness. While such confusion is not itself new, it takes on a new significance in the light of the rapid expansion of English as evidenced in the lexis of translators such as John Skelton and Gavin Douglas. The ambiguity inherent in Hawes' treatment of the word 'invention' may be seen as a paradigm of the Janus-like nature of their new-coined terms, in which the stable meaning of the etymon contrasts with the accumulation of new, vernacular meanings. I shall argue that these visible accretions of meaning contribute to a growing perception of English as an independent language. The frequently overlooked translators of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries therefore help establish the conditions for the celebrated verbal inventiveness of the late sixteenth century.