Most English words aren't originally English

A 1973 computerised survey of 80,000 dictionary entries found French and Latin each contribute over a quarter of English vocabulary — together more than half — versus roughly a quarter from Old English, Old Norse and Dutch combined. The everyday words people reach for most often, though, still skew heavily Germanic.

— Thomas Finkenstaedt & Dieter Wolff, Ordered Profusion: Studies in Dictionaries and the English Lexicon — C. Winter, Heidelberg, 1973