> So not surprising perhaps that many of the more obscure words end up being french.

Of course, for a native speaker at least, but for people with English as a second language there are many lower-class words that we never encountered before, because they simply don't occur in books or in online discussions. I got 88 correct out of 100 in this list but I'm almost certain I'd have faired much worse had the list been about niche house or agricultural items.

What counts as "obscure" is highly context dependent.