These are words that we no longer say.
We hardly understand them yet.
They were once the norm, the ordinary language we heard on a daily basis.
If we carried out a little investigation, we would not be surprised to see that these words are hardly used any more.
Who today would still understand the meaning of the verb
“gueuser”
or of the term
“fidéjusseur”
?
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The great writers of the 19th century participated in the development of a language that we no longer speak. Balzac, for example, is the father of an anthology of invented words. He created, among other things, the charming verb
"to chafrioler"
, which means
"to caress, to indulge in the way of cats"
.
We thus come across in the
Human Comedy
of earthy neologisms such as
“balanogaudisseries”
,
“mammalement”
or
“pistolander”
.
But also words which gradually integrated our language, such as:
“exclusivity”
,
“Lilliputian”
(recently used by François Hollande to qualify the candidates of the left), or
“modernity”
, concept which Balzac popularized at the beginning of the 1820s.
The editorial staff invites you to (re) discover this 19th century glossary in a short test.
Will you get 10/10?