I doubt French kept the term the whole time. I would say that it is more likely that later intellectuals knowledgeable in Latin created afresh a calque on the Latin term.
Respectfully, that does not match up with my rudimentary understanding of linguistics. Considering that both languages pull from the Latin family, I would assume that they are more likely to share an origin, than converge to that etymology coincidentally.
I could totally be wrong about this, of course. For example if you would spoke French, I'd look like an asshole.
Presque in French is not a reflex of Latin paene, so presqu'île is not a straightforward continuation of Latin paeninsula.
> I could totally be wrong about this, of course. For example if you would spoke French, I'd look like an asshole.
I do happen to speak French, but that is irrelevant. Merely speaking a language does not make a person an authority on etymology. The general public often holds unsound views on where the words they use come from. I am however involved in historical linguistics in academia, and what I would like to emphasize here is that the Romance languages are well known to have created calques on the basis of learned Latin -- examples abound in Spanish and Romanian too, for example. The layman may believe them to continue Latin forms, but they can be shown to represent late coinages, not retentions.
