The first French dictionaries and the emergence of Aurore Boréale as a lexical entry

Introductory essay

Abstract

The eighteenth volume provides an overview of the Aurore Boréale (northern lights, aurora borealis) as described in monolingual French dictionaries from the first half of the eighteenth century. The very first examples of such dictionaries – published in the 1680s and 1690s – had no coverage of the northern lights. Since 1701, however, the phenomenon was included in the following dictionaries: posthumous versions of Antoine Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel edited by Henri Basnage de Beauval (1701) and Jean-Baptiste Brutel de la Rivière (1727); the "Dictionnaire de Trévoux" edited by a group of Jesuits (editions from 1704, 1721, 1732, 1743); and the Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise (third edition, 1740). The introductory essay by Muriel Brot and Per Pippin Aspaas contextualises the introduction of the northern ligths as a lexical term and provides English translations of relevant entries in the dictionaries. Digitisations of the original entries are included in facsimile.

This publication is based on a presentation given by Muriel Brot, research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Unité Mixte de Recherche of the Université Paris-Sorbonne), at an international workshop organised by the Malaurie Institute of Arctic Research Monaco-UVSQ in Versailles, 23 January 2025.