Happy Bastille Day! Today we mark the fall of the Bastille prison on this date in 1789 with a look at French (and linguistic) history. (来源：英语学习门户 http://www.EnglishCN.com)

The word cahier first appeared in English in 1789. Although nowadays a cahier is just a cahier—that is, a "report or memorial concerning policy, especially of a parliamentary body"— back then, the term (from the French word for quire, meaning 1/20 of a ream of paper)—was loaded. In the spring of '89, a list of grievances—the Cahier de Doleances—was collected from all three estates, or classes, in France.

It's obvious why historians value the original cahier, but lexicographers also appreciate that primary source. As a result of the Cahier de Doleances, the corvee—"the unpaid labor due a lord from his vassal"—was abolished. Corvee was borrowed into English from French back in the 14th century (and has an ancestor in the Latin verb meaning "to bring together by entreaty").

The local corvee, or work obligation, had never been considered overly burdensome, but the newer royal demands for labor from the working classes (and yes, working class also entered English in 1789) was one of the underlying causes of the French Revolution.

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