Two of the bibles of the French language, the Petit Larousse encyclopaedic dictionary and Le Petit Robert, have developed a few new culinary and artistic tastes.
On Monday, the editors announced the latest editions would contain 300 new words and expressions including “focaccia”, “biryani”, “goji” and “vegan”.
Showing it is moving with the times, and in defiance of the Académie Française’s diktat’s on anglicisms, the 2016 Larousse will include what Libération described as the “unbearable” word “selfie” – plus its Québécois equivalent “égoportrait” – as well as “big data” and “open data”, “community manager” and “bitcoin”. It will also include the term “captcha” for those annoying series of numbers and letters websites demand to prove the user is human.
Notable cultural additions will be the celebrated veteran French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, actor Michael Caine, the British street artist Banksy as well as the Rosetta space probe and Pixar studios.
Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, and his cartoonist colleague Jean Cabut, aka Cabu – both killed by Islamic fundamentalists in January – have also been included in Le Petit Robert, as has the Nobel peace prize-winning Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai in the new Larousse.
While Libération says the inclusion and definition of “bolos” – with one “s” and described as “a naive person, someone with little courage, completely ridiculous, even stupid” – will cause controversy and is possibly plain wrong, some of the new terms need little translation: “électrosensibilité”, “ghettoïser”, “recyclerie” and “climatosceptique” among them.
And if you do not know what they mean, Larousse has a word for you too: “la loser”.
