The (; English: Dictionary of the French academy) is a French language dictionary 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.Article 26 of the statutes of the Académie: "A dictionary, grammar, rhetoric and poetics will be compiled based on the observations of the academy"; apart from a single grammar in 1932, only the dictionary has been produced. Retrieved 2025-04-13 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.Guillaume Massieu, Oeuvres de Mr de Tourreil (Brunet, 1721) Vol. I, pp. ix–x. on 24 August 1694.

Preliminary editions: (from A to Aversion), pre-edition, Frankfurt am Main, 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 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 tags 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".

See also

Language policy in France Reforms of French orthography

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. 1, vol. 2 Nouveau Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dedié au Roy, 2nd edition (1718), vol. , 3rd edition (1740), vol. 1, vol .2 , 4th edition (1762), vol. 1, vol. 2 , 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