Dictionnaire de l'Académie française

Title page of the 6th edition of the Académie's dictionary (1835)

The Dictionnaire de l'Académie française is the official dictionary of the French language.

The Académie française is France's official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language, although its recommendations carry no legal power. Sometimes, even governmental authorities disregard the Académie's rulings.

Publication

A special Commission (Commission du dictionnaire) composed of several (but not all) of the members of the Académie undertakes the compilation of the dictionary. It has published thirteen editions of the dictionary, of which three were preliminary, eight were complete, and two were supplements for specialised words.^[1] These include:

Preliminary editions:

• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise (from A to Aversion), pre-edition, Frankfurt am Main, 1687
• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise (from A to Confiture), pre-edition, Frankfurt am Main, 1687
• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise (from A to Neuf), pre-edition, Paris, 1687

Vocabulaire de la langue française; par MM. Nodier et Ackermann, Paris, 1868

Complete editions:

• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dedié au Roy (1st edition), Paris, 1694
• Nouveau Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise dedié au Roy (2nd edition), Paris, 1718
• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise (3rd edition), Paris, 1740
• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise (4th edition), Paris, 1762
• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise (5th edition), Paris, 1798
• Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (6th edition), Paris, 1835
• Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (7th edition), Paris, 1879
• Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (8th edition), Paris, 1932-1935

Supplementary editions for the sciences, arts, and technology:

• Corneille, Thomas, Le Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences, Paris, 1694
• Barré, Louis, Complément du Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, Paris, 1842

In 1778, the Académie attempted to compile a "historical dictionary" of the French language. The project was later abandoned, having failed to progress beyond the letter "A".

The 8th edition of 1935 contained approximately 35,000 words. The Académie continues work on the ninth edition, begun in 1986, of which the first volume (A to Enzyme) was published in 1992 (ISBN 2-213-62142-X), and the second (Éocène to Mappemonde) in 2000 (ISBN 2-213-62143-8). As the work goes on, additional parts of the Dictionnaire are published in the Documents administratifs of the Journal Officiel, and posted online. The finalized ninth edition is expected to contain more than 15,000 new words. In part because the current edition dates from 1935, other dictionaries (such as those published by Larousse and Le Robert) are more commonly used as everyday reference sources than the Académie's.

See also

• Language policy in France
• Reforms of French orthography

References

1. ^ Classiques Garnier numérique, Corpus of Dictionaries of the French Academy (from the 17th to the 20th Century), Retrieved 2011-03-17

External links

Searchable original texts

• University of Chicago, The ARTFL Project, Dictionnaires d'autrefois, Full text, searchable French dictionaries of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Includes: Dictionnaire de L'Académie française: 1st (1694), 4th (1762), 5th (1798), 6th (1835), and 8th (1932–5) editions; Jean Nicot's Thresor de la langue française (1606), Jean-François Féraud's Dictionaire critique de la langue française (1787–1788), and Émile Littré's Dictionnaire de la langue française (1872–1877)
• Académie française, Dictionnaire de L'Académie française, 9th edition online, official site, work-in-progress with regular updates

Facsimile reproductions

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France:

• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dedié au Roy, 1st edition (1694), vol. 1, vol. 2
• Nouveau Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise dedié au Roy, 2nd edition (1718), vol.
• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise, 3rd edition (1740), vol. 1, vol .2
• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise, 4th edition (1762), vol. 1, vol. 2
• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise, 5th edition (1798), vol. 1, vol. 2
• Dictionnaire de L'Académie française, 6th edition (1835), vol. 1, vol. 2
• Dictionnaire de L'Académie française, 7th edition (1878), vol. 1, vol. 2