Pomp and circumstance rule the Académie française, an eminent council of forty emerald-clad French literati (“the Immortals”) cast as lifelong guardians of the sacred language of Corneille and Zola. First established by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, the institution is a relic from a time when the pen was mightier than a sword—as English playwright Edward Bulver-Lytton put it in his 1839 play about the institution’s founder.
The Académie’s pride and joy is its dictionary, now in its ninth edition, of which the final volume (From R to Zzz!) was published last November. (Its predecessor was completed in 1935; online, you can trace how words have appeared in the dictionary, or not, since 1692).
Several new entries — like shabbat, or surfeur— appear self-explanatory. Others like the onomatopoeic tam–tam, or zzz! are random, but fun. Remueménigues, it turns out, is French for brainstorming. We assume Studbook refers to horses. That’s one of many loanwords co-opted by the Académie. Others include Rollmops from German, tilbury from English, Wyandotte from American English, sodoku and sudoku from Japanese, vodka from Russian (surely this existed before), and yatagan from Turkish (an Ottoman-era sword). What inspired these choices is unclear—we do know their selection took place on weekly Thursday sessions when, over decades, the dictionary’s compilers got together to hash it out.
It’s a fun romp through the richness of language. But, as Borges said “the map is not the territory”; nor is a dictionary the language. Work on the tenth edition is already underway. In the words of Maurice Druon, former secrétaire perpétuel, “Language, like the sea, always starts again.” But the waves churn faster
these days. One wonders how the Académie can keep its head above water.
Dictionnaire de l’Académie française
Tome 4
Éditions Fayard, 2025, 800 pages
