The words pitié and pieté, though deriving from the same etymon (pietas), are usually treated separately by dictionaries, with a distinctive semantic shift in: 'pity' versus 'piety'. Classical Latin pietas originally only had the sense ‘piety, holiness’, but soon developed ‘pity, compassion’ as an extended sense, and it is mainly the later that is found in medieval vernacular (cf. OED etymology of pity n.). In Anglo-Norman, the sense 'pity' prevails entirely for both spellings, and the sense 'piety' does not appear to be unequivocally attested. As a result, it was decided to treat both forms in the same entry. It is only in the seventeenth century that English pity and piety become truly differentiated, both formally and semantically. In several cases, the grammar suggests that the expression [subject] prendre pité de ... (with pité as direct object) should be interpreted, perhaps somewhat awkwardly, as pité prend [direct object or indirect object] de ... (with pité as subject).