The uses of the French imperfect have undergone a vast extension throughout the history of the French language. It has become prototypical in contexts such as description where old French used simple past. The prototypical uses have resulted in a large number of stylistic uses: hypothesis, free indirect speech, and the so-called forain, hypocoristique, ludique and narratif. The wide range of uses raises the question of the semantic unity of that form in synchrony as well as in diachrony. Here are gathered discussions of emergent uses of the imperfect, that are tackled through a variety of approaches (Damourette and Pichon’s, Wilmet’s or Guillaume’s systems, logic semantics or relevance theory).