Dictionaries' war of words

ENVIRONMENTAL words have topped the list of the latest French entries in two new rival dictionaries – while technology-based anglicisms continue their march.

Le Petit Robert and Le Petit Larousse have both unveiled new editions with hundreds of neologisms, some of which can already be found in everyday use and some totally unfamiliar.

Neologisms are not just new words but also new meanings of a known word, a new idiom or a new regional use. Both dictionaries have allowed 150 to enter in their most recent editions.

Among the English words which have made an appearance in the Petit Larousse, the field of IT seems to be the most prolific with rising terms like nerd, pop-up and aggrégateur.

Pop-up is the much more commonly used equivalent of the French fenêtre intruse – which had been Larousse’s official recommended translation but was rarely used in reality.

Larousse dictionary and encyclopedia director Carine Girac-Marinier said: “Journalists had already spread pop-up and users had adopted it before our official recommendation was published. Since the
Petit Larousse tries to reflect French language as it used, it is the word pop-up which has come to feature in our dictionary because it is the most used today.”

French equivalents of English words can take a long time to get off the ground: logiciel was first used in 1972 but took three decades before it had fully beaten off the word software.

“We cannot predict how long it would take an official recommendation to replace an anglicism,” said Ms Girac-Marinier. “Logiciel is an example of a brilliant success, with ordinateur and several others.

“If our answer comes quick and the word is well-chosen and becomes well-known, it can all happen very fast. On the contrary, when these conditions are not met, it is often a failure.”

New addition aggrégateur is a gallicised version of aggregator – a website or software whose function is to gather one type of content. Wikipedia and Google are among the websites that have made it into the dictionary as new proper nouns.

Other terms showing up in the Petit Larousse include fashionista and the craft of scrapbooking.

In the Petit Robert, environmental concerns seemed to be pushing most of the latest additions with autopartage, bioclimatique, biogaz, prime à la casse, chimie verte, dystrophisation, énergivore, gaz naturel pour véhicules and méthanisation.

The Anglo-American smoothie whose undecided French translation varies from lait fouetté to yaourt frappé and cranberry, barely known in French as canneberge, represented the latest contributions to the Petit Robert’s food and drink list.

To determine which of the 6,000 neologisms examined every year by Larousse will join the lucky additions, a team of expert linguists propose and vote to defend their favourites. The editorial directors have the final say.

Words are selected according to the frequency of appearance in the media and the urgency brought about by certain news topics – without “getting carried away or influenced by passing trends”, said Ms Girac-Marinier.