Académie française

France's language authority

The Académie française is France's official authority on the French language, founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu.

Its forty members, called "les immortels," are charged with maintaining standards of French usage, publishing an official dictionary, and ruling on matters of grammar and vocabulary.

The institution remains influential in French cultural life, though its prescriptions are often ignored in everyday speech.

lexicographyCompiling word reference books
MolièreTartuffe's comic creator
grammarLanguage's structural rules
Victor HugoFrench nineteenth-century novelist
épéeFencing sword, points only

linguistic purism · orthography · Balzac · syntax · Voltaire · etymology · Baudelaire · Flaubert · monarchy · Proust · semantics · Enlightenment · dictionary · French Republic · French · Paris · prestige · absolutism

Opposites

linguistic authority

Académie françaisedescriptivism

Documenting actual language use

the street · slang · Urban Dictionary · regional dialects

cultural conservatism

Académie françaiseavant-garde

Innovative cultural pioneers

Dada · counterculture · underground culture · street art

linguistic purity vs. hybridity

Académie françaisepidgin

Improvised contact language

code-switching · Spanglish

Family

academy, academic, academically, academician, academics, academies, France, Frenchman, franchise

Familiarity: Top 1,000,000
Profile: Used worldwide · Timeless · Concrete · Rated G