These two consecutive issues of Le Français préclassique contain (in IX, a.k.a. 9) a range of articles of uniformly high quality and (in X, alias 10) the proceedings of a substantial colloquium on La Dénomination des savoirs en français préclassique, held in Lyon in 2005. Both bear testimony to the growing and overdue interest in this period of the history of French and to the significance of the research currently being carried out concerning it. If volume X is inevitably oriented towards lexical studies, IX offers a wider range: B. Combettes discusses ‘les constructions à détachement’ in Montaigne, and P. Swiggers considers how sixteenth-century grammarians describe and analyse the concept of the verb. The remaining contributions to this volume are essentially lexical: P. Selosse gives an extensive account of bahuvrīhi (a Sanskrit term for compounds of the type millefolius/mille-feuille) in botanical Latin in the Renaissance; F. Henry continues her investigations into the terminology of vines and wine-making with a study of the semantic field of the concept of vrille (‘tendril’), with modern dialectal equivalents as well as historical data; Volker Mecking explores the vocabulary of Nicolas Pasquier's 1611 didactic treatise Le Gentilhomme; and André Klump supplies an analysis of neologisms, semantic innovations, and borrowings in Oudin's Grammaire Espagnolle. Volume X takes up a theme which has come to the fore in recent research, being also the subject of colloquia in Heidelberg (January 2007; Paris, January 2008) and which was also behind one in Nancy in September 2005 (see Bertrand et al. Reference Bertrand, Gerner and Stumpf2007) namely the relationship between the development of ‘modern’ knowledge and science, the translatio studii from pre-modern (and Latin) to modern (and vernacular), and the consequences for the French language. For this, the Renaissance and early modern period is a key moment. Overwhelmingly the issue is of course one of lexis. The volume opens with a discussion by L. Loty of the extent to which distinct disciplines need their own terminology, together with a salutary reminder of the risk of anachronism (‘Utopie’ did not start out as pejorative). Directly following on from this, C. Balavoine reminds us that if the sixteenth century has emblems in large quantity, it did not yet have ‘emblématique’, and F. Henry makes similar points in a detailed study of the metalanguage of wine-making. The relationship between the names for now separate, but then overlapping, disciplines is reviewed by M. Gaille-Nikodimov (anatomie/anthropologie) and H. Gerner (astronomie/astrologie, only properly distinct after Copernicus). A number of specific terms are closely analysed: belles-lettres (and its relationship to bonnes lettres, as in Rabelais) (P. Caron); the defunct orchésographie, now superseded by choréographie (M.-J. Louison-Lassablière); machine (J.-L. Martine); poésie (A. Schoysman); histoire as a term for scientific writings, cf. Historia naturalis (M. Marrache-Gouraud) and in more general usage (P. Mounier). S. Delon examines the words used for what we would think of as different branches of music and musicology; T. Jaroszewska deals with the emergence of dictionnaire, slowly replacing thesaurus and its French reflexes; M. Furno follows this up with a study of the titles of Latin and French dictionaries. N. Fournier/B. Colombat chart the development of grammaire as opposed to adjectival compounds with grammatical(e). C. Gutbub scrutinizes Du Bellay's use (or not) of traduire and its near-synonym, translater, in the Deffence et illustration; finally, D. Régnier-Roux considers metaphor as an instrument for the invention of scientific terminology. The volume concludes with a valuable synthesis by P. Selosse and an especially useful index of words discussed (as also in IX). The subject of this volume is important and the words which individual contributors choose to examine are central to our understanding of how the Renaissance changed society and language. And, because the underlying processes are relevant not only to the sixteenth century, but to the development of French (or indeed any language) as it attempts to keep pace with technological change, the material should be of interest to those concerned with all periods of the French language.