This paper considers the different ways in which Early Middle English poetry deploys recent French loanwords. It argues that the associations attaching to these words change depending on the contexts in which they are situated. Focusing on four examples, two from the Auchinleck Manuscript and two from Harley 2253, it shows Middle English poems using French words in order to depict French identities; to elaborate political critique within England; to develop satirical portraits of characters beneath the ranks of the nobility and the gentry; and to stretch readers’ imaginations to the corners of the known world. Recent French loans are identified using the first dates of attestation recorded in the Middle English Dictionary; an ancillary aim of the paper is to show how historical dictionaries can be used to establish the lexical expectations of medieval audiences. The argument’s debts to historical linguistic scholarship are great but the paper claims that poetry deserves to be considered a text-type apart from the more pragmatic documents that historical linguists now normally treat.