Prose
The word "prose" first appears in English in the 14th century. It is derived from the Old French "prose", which in turn originates in the Latin expression "prosa oratio" (literally, straightforward or direct speech).
Essay
The word "essay" derives from the French infinitive "essayer", "to try" or "to attempt". In English "essay" first meant "a trial" or "an attempt", and this is still an alternative meaning. The Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) was the first author to describe his work as essays; he used the term to characterize these as "attempts" to put his thoughts into writing, and his essays grew out of his commonplacing. Inspired in particular by the works of Plutarch, a translation of whose "Œuvres Morales" ("Moral works") into French had just been published by Jacques Amyot, Montaigne began to compose his essays in 1572; the first edition, entitled "Essais", was published in two volumes in 1580. For the rest of his life, he continued revising previously published essays and composing new ones. Francis Bacon's essays, published in book form in 1597, 1612, and 1625, were the first works in English that described themselves as "essays". Ben Jonson first used the word "essayist" in English in 1609, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary".