The (; English: Dictionary of the French academy) is a

French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

published by the . The is an institution tasked with establishing rules for the use of the French language, the compilation of a dictionary being one of its primary tasks. Although it makes recommendations for the correct use of French, they carry no legal power, and are frequently disregarded, including by government authorities. The ninth edition was completed in November 2024, and is available online in its entirety along with all previous editions.

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. The completed edition of the , the first official dictionary of the French language, was presented upon completion by the Académie to King

Louis XIV LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...

. on 24 August 1694. Preliminary editions: * (from ''A'' to ''Aversion''), pre-edition,

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

, 1687 * (from ''A'' to ''Confiture''), pre-edition, Frankfurt am Main, 1687 * (from ''A'' to ''Neuf''), pre-edition, Paris, 1687 Complete editions: * (1st edition), Paris, 1694 * ''Nouveau Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dedié au Roy'' (2nd edition), Paris, 1718 * (3rd edition), Paris, 1740 * (4th edition), Paris, 1762 * (5th edition), Paris, 1798 * (6th edition), Paris, 1835 * (7th edition), Paris, 1879 * (8th edition), Paris, 1932–1935 * (9th edition), Paris, 1992-2024 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". Work on the ninth edition started in 1986, and was concluded in 2024 by the publication of its last volume. It was published in four volumes starting in 1992: * 1st volume (''A'' to ''Enzyme''), 1992 () * 2nd volume (''Éocène'' to ''Mappemonde''), 2000 () * 3rd volume (''Maquereau'' to ''Quotité''), 2011 () * 4th volume (''R'' to ''Zzz''), 2024 () The completed ninth edition was presented by the Académie Française to French president

Emmanuel Macron Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He was Ministry of Economy and Finance (France), Minister of Economics, Industr ...

on 14 November 2024. With almost 53,000 words, it contains 21,000 new words compared to the 8th edition. Given that, by the time all volumes were completed, the first volume was already 32 years old and thus long out of date, the Académie published addenda of 189 words which had not been added to their respective volumes at the time of their publication. In part due to the unusually slow publication cycle of the , other dictionaries (such as those published by Larousse and Le Robert) are more commonly used as everyday reference sources. They are also more comprehensive, with the counting 350,000 words.

Encoding

The

IETF language tag An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code that is used to identify human languages on the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the subtags ...

s have registered for Early Modern French, "17th century French, as catalogued in the "Dictionnaire de l'académie françoise", 4eme ed. 1694; frequently includes elements of Middle French, as this is a transitional period".

References

External links

Searchable original texts

Official site.
Includes all entries from all editions.
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)

Facsimile reproductions

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France: * ''Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dedié au Roy'', 1st edition (1694)
vol. 1vol. 2
* ''Nouveau Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dedié au Roy'', 2nd edition (1718)
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* , 3rd edition (1740)
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* , 4th edition (1762)
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* , 5th edition (1798)
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* ''Dictionnaire de L'Académie française'', 6th edition (1835)
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* ''Dictionnaire de L'Académie française'', 7th edition (1878)
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dictionnaire de l'Academie francaise

Académie française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...