'Jail' or 'Gaol'? The French origins of English doublets

Anyone who has had to learn the language knows that English has lots and lots of words to describe the same thing. Often this is because each of these synonyms has snuck into the language via a different route. Take a few legal examples: null and void, cease and desist, aid and abet. Each of these are pairs of synonyms, but in each case one word entered English via Latin and the other via French. The legal system introduced this nomenclature at a time, roughly a thousand years ago, when many people had knowledge of Latin or French, but not always both.

To make matters more confusing, sometimes in English you'll encounter a pair of synonyms that have each derived from the same language - typically French - but at different points throughout history. As a result they look and sound similar, and mean more or less the same thing (although there are exceptions; read on to find out more). They are what are known as doublets: words which share the same origin and history.

French has exerted a continual influence on English over the past thousand years. It all started in 1066, when the Normans invaded England, bringing their culture and language with them. The language they spoke was a little different from the kind of French you'll learn from Alexa. Known as Norman French, it was distinctive for certain phonetic differences from standard French. For instance, many words which begin with 'g' in standard French began with 'w' in Norman French. The soft 'ch' sound that appears in many standard French words was rendered as a hard 'k' sound in their Norman equivalents, and Norman French retained the 's' sound in words such as 'feast' (fête) and 'hostel' (hôtel) while standard French dropped them.

As the Normans came to rule England, their language permeated into and blended with the language - known as Anglo-Saxon - spoken by the native Britons. A new language was formed from this confluence - what linguists call Middle English - which developed separately from the French spoken on the continent.

But the influence of French on English was a piecemeal development. Initially, Norman French was the predominant influence; but over time, and particularly as the territories of England and France continued to intermingle and overlap, standard French came to have a more direct impact on the English language. England controlled the Duchy of Aquitaine in France between1154 and 1453, for instance, while in the early 13th century, during the First Barons' War, Prince Louis of France invaded England. The result of all this cultural interchange was that even as 'gaol' (originally pronounced with a hard 'g') entered English in the 1200s, by the 1300s 'jail' had also smuggled itself in. The same happened with many other words over the next few centuries, such as royal and regal, loyal and legal, grave and grief, and so on.

The question, then, is why did we need these new French words? And if we did, why didn't the new French words replace the old ones?

In the case of gaol/jail, the latter became the preferred pronunciation. But the former stuck around, having been cemented in legal tradition. The twin threads of official legalese and colloquial parlance meant that both words continued to be used in tandem right up to the present, although 'gaol' is finally falling out of fashion. The Guardian newspaper, for instance, switched its recommended spelling from 'gaol' to 'jail' in the 1980s.

In fact, 'guardian' is another doublet, this time of the word 'warden'. (Remember that the word for 'war' in French is 'guerre'.) 'Warden' was given to us by the Normans, and has been recorded in usage since the 1300s, whereas 'guardian' first entered the English language around a century later, though to this day both words mean essentially the same thing (i.e. a protector).

Even after the Hundred Years' War, after which both England and France would remain independent of one another, French, as a language of prestige in Europe, continued to influence Europe, lending English many loanwords such as cuisine, ennui, etc. But most doublets, which continue to confuse people to this day, can be traced back to the medieval period.