‘The many hundreds of French words that flowed into Middle English suffered different fates. Some of them we re simply taken as they were, but many were assimilated into local dialects. Borrowed French and Latin words often coexisted with their English synonyms, instead of displacing one another or hybridizing. In the fifteenth century English developed a trilevel system of synonyms with different levels of prestige: common place English (” rise,” “ask”), literary French (“mount,” “question”), and learned Latin (“ascend,” ” interrogate”). As one historian puts it, this accumulation of synonyms al lowed “for a greater differentiation of styles – in both formal and informal usage …. Thus the native English vocabulary is more emotional and informal, whereas the imported French synonyms are more intellectual and formal. The warmth and force of the former contrasts with the cool ness and clarity of the latter. If a speaker can be intimate, blunt, and direct in basic English, he can also be discreet, polite, and courteously elegant in the diction of borrowed French.’