The Continental French dictionaries all distinguish four separate words, with the emphasis either on the first syllable – pens (masculine) and pense (feminine), or on the second – pensé (masculine) and pensée (feminine). Although AND¹ tried to reflect this, such a distinction cannot be maintained for Anglo-Norman, where word-gender and spelling are much more fluid.

As to the distinction between pense and pensé, the only real indicator for determining whether or not the final ‘e’ is tonic is rhyme. Somewhat surprisingly, when the word is attested in a rhyming position (in Anglo-Norman), it always appears as the accented form. In other words, at present no unambiguous instance could be found of the unaccented pense spelling. AND¹’s single citation for the original entry pense, ‘Je acertes dis el trespas de la meie pense: Sui jetet de la face de tes oilz’ (Oxf Ps¹ 30.28), may just as well be read as pensé (as is the case in Ian Short's edition). This does not imply that the atonic form pense did not exist in Anglo-Norman, and it would not be incorrect to interpret instances of pensé in a non-rhyming position as pense.

While, formally, pensee might be easier to distinguish, Anglo-Norman generally uses ‘-é’ and ‘-ee’ spellings indistinguishably (both for masculine and feminine nouns), and it would seem atypical once more to create separate articles here on the basis of simply this feature.

Leaving only some rare uses of pens and penseie, both forms within the parameters of typical spelling variation in Anglo-Norman, the decision was made for AND² to treat all four of them as a single entry.

The same lexeme also produced pansy n. and a. in English, from c.1450 (found in Continental French as pensée 2: the plant ‘heartsease (Viola tricolor) or any plants of the Viola family, similar to the violet’, which was associated with remembrance. This meaning does not seem to be attested in Anglo-Norman.