Do you know what an
"inter" is
?
Do you know the meaning of
"leaflet"
?
And the one in the
"fridge"
?
Your brow furrows, you are hesitant.
No, you have no idea what these words mean.
No wonder, don't worry.
It is indeed a safe bet, if you are not familiar with the profession of journalism, that you have never crossed these words.
The written press has, like most trades, its own jargon.
Some of these words have more or less disappeared from use.
The editorial staff invites you to (re) discover them.
»READ ALSO - Five words we used to hear in bistros
● The "piss-copy"
This is an unflattering word.
It's a nickname, in journalism slang, that it was best not to hear oneself say.
The
"piss-copy"
was the one that blackened pages and pages (
"leaflets"
) where one was enough, informs The glossary of terms in the print media.
It is also employed in the place of a
"writer who writes abundantly and poorly"
, adds the Treasury of the French language.
He is a
"journalist on duty"
with a poor future.
● "The bear"
This nickname was in vogue in the 19th century, to call the boss of a printing house.
He would first have designated
"the typographer, whose movement in front of the press evokes the movement of the bear"
, informs the thesaurus.
It subsequently enters journalistic jargon to mean the place where the name of the newspaper and its address are listed, and those of the editors.
Balzac sheds light on the meaning of this word in
Illusions perdues
, when he mentions the printing press of David Séchard in Angoulême:
“This Séchard was a former journeyman pressman whom in their typographical slang the workers responsible for assembling the letters call a Bear.
The back-and-forth movement, which looks quite like that of a caged bear (...) has undoubtedly earned them this nickname. "
● The "keyboardist"
The latter has almost entirely disappeared from the world of the written press.
The "keyboard player" appeared at the time of the upheaval of the profession with the arrival of data processing, in the years 1970-1980.
He was then responsible for typing the articles of the journalists on the computer, who called him to dictate their text.
He is then the one who works on a keyboard for the typographical composition of books or newspapers.
What every journalist in the written press has become today, the use of dictating his article from a distance is becoming increasingly rare.
● The "broth"
No soup here.
The
"broth"
designates
"all the unsold products of a publication (difference between the circulation, number of copies printed, and circulation, number of copies sold)"
, according to the glossary of terms in the written press.
It was also said figuratively:
"take a broth"
, or
"go to the broth"
, to signify that the newspaper was in financial difficulty.
● The "duck"
The word has not entirely disappeared from the landscape.
The
"duck"
is first of all
"a false news often imagined from scratch and swollen to melodrama in second-class newspapers"
, underlines the CNRTL.
Probably by the derivative of the onomatopoeia of the old French
caner
, "
cackle
".
Balzac, always in high spirits when it comes to the press, writes in
La cousine Bette
:
"Of all the species of ducks, the most dangerous for the opposition newspapers is the official duck."
The
"duck"
subsequently became in journalistic slang a
"bad newspaper"
and by extension,
"any newspaper"
.