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Many new words have entered the 9th edition of the French Academy dictionary
LANGUAGE – Nearly 100 years after the last edition, theFrench Academy now has its new dictionary. An opus divided into four volumes that the Immortals took almost forty years to create and which is presented to Emmanuel Macron this Thursday, November 14.
330 years after the very first edition of its dictionary, the French Academy explains in a press release having wanted this ninth edition to be “ the mirror of an era which runs from 1950 to the present day “. A mirror in which, however, the younger generations risk not recognizing themselves.
By among the 21,000 new words added compared to the 1935 edition, many have a very relative modernity. Among the terms highlighted by the Academy in its press release, many have very limited use among those under 40. We can thus find cited as examples in the press release the “new” words: incredible, deafening, tartempion, yuppie, rewinder, thugocracy, rancard, zonard, superhero, Taylorism or zouk.
“Zonard” is one of the new words in the French Academy dictionary released in November 2024.
And conversely by searching via the free portal of the French Academy websiteyou will not find a definition for the “new” words added in recent years in The Larousse And Little Robertlike tiktoker, cluster, grossophobia, mocktail, upcycling, face-to-face, transidentity, vlog, racialized, emoji, ecoanxiety, metaverse, misgendering, bader or even babka.
The evolution of language since 1986
The reason behind the apparent lack of modernity of a dictionary which nonetheless claims to be “ anchored in our times », the duration necessary for its completion. Indeed, the 9th version of the dictionary of the French Academy was launched in 1986. The work was divided into letters, thus spreading the design of the dictionary and the addition of new words over a period of almost 40 years: from A to Enz between 1986 and 1992, from Eoc to Map between 1992 and 2000, from Maq to Quo between 2000 and 2011, and from R to Zzz between 2011 and 2024. Periods during which the French language has inevitably evolved.
French Academy
The word “wokism” appears in the 9th edition of the dictionary of the French Academy.
But it is clear that while many “new” words seem outdated to Gen Z and Alpha, or even to Millennials, others, on the contrary, have now become part of their everyday language whereas for some a decade or two ago, they were non-existent. This is for example the case of vegan, sorority, teleworking, wokism, slam, road movie, spreadsheet, retrovirus, zadiste, thriller, speech, yuzu, or sushi.
A ninth, truly more modern dictionary
With this ninth version of its dictionary, the French Academy has also achieved the feminization of professional names and official functions. A consequence of the adoption in 2019 by the Immortals of the conclusions of a report on this subject. We thus directly find the words viticulturist or technician in this volume 4. For the three previous volumes, the Academy added modifications on the digital portal to words which did not yet benefit from “feminine”. We find, for example, proposals for feminization for the words author, ambassador, and mayor.
French Academy
The “feminization” box as found on the French Academy dictionary website.
“ The directory of words proposed is not intended to be exhaustive because this work is not an encyclopedic sum, pclarifies the press release from the French Academy. It strives to reflect a common language in the noblest sense, a language that we share and have in common today.. A French language which also fully integrates words from all over the world, which the French Academy has taken into account, adding spleen, risotto, wax, sapeur, sudoku, sofa, raï, wok, realpolitik and even speaker.
The French Academy explained that it was already working on the 10th edition of its dictionary. An edition in which vegan and vlog will undoubtedly have their place. And maybe even “chouffer”, “djo” and “bail”, to please Aya Nakamura which proved during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games that the French Academy also knew how to open up to modernity.
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