The new edition of Larousse welcomes this year a batch of 150 new words. Among them, “wokism”, “NFTs” and a whole cohort of words or expressions related to the pandemic.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), wokism and halloumi are among the words that enter the 2023 edition of the Larousse dictionary, the publishing house said on Monday.
“This new edition incorporates 150 new words, meanings, phrases and expressions testifying to both the vitality and the diversity of the French language,” said Larousse editions in a press release.
The definition of NFT (or JNF in French) is: “A non-reproducible and tamper-proof digital file representing a unique asset, virtual or physical object (work of art, tweet, piece of music, etc.), which is listed in a blockchain and to which is associated a digital certificate of authenticity and ownership”.
“Crypto art” and “wokism”
The Larousse also devotes “crypto art”, the artistic movement that produces NFTs.
As for “wokism”, it is the “ideology of woke inspiration, centered on questions of equality, justice and the defense of minorities, sometimes perceived as prejudicial to republican universalism”.
Separatism (“willingness of a minority, generally religious, to place its own laws above national legislation”), invisibilization or grossophobia are also adopted.
The Covid-19 pandemic remains an important provider of new terms, including “Covid long”, “vaccine pass” and “sanitary”, “vaccinodrome”, but also “essential trade” or even “enfermiste” and “reassuring” to characterize the two antagonistic discourses on public health measures.
People and foreign words
Among the foreign words, Cypriot cheese, halloumi, will rub shoulders with konjac (Japanese plant), kakapo (New Zealand parrot), chick lit (literature for young women in English), tomte (Swedish elf) or even yodeling (singing technique from the German-speaking Alps).
K-pop, which needs no introduction, but also chick lit, defined as “urban romance”, or flow, well known to rappers, are also entering the Illustrated Petit Larousse.
As for proper names, the Larousse devotes the creator Olivier Rousteing, the dancer Misty Copeland, the cook Thierry Marx or the Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Angelita Ressa.
The dictionary, one of the two reference in France with Le Robert, is celebrating its 170th anniversary. To be published on June 15, it has more than 64,000 words and some 28,000 proper names.