Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
French Academy

French Academy

1 6.9
An official group of important French writers and scholars who set rules for the French language
  • proper noun
translation icon : Academia Francesa
  • The French Academy plays a vital role in preserving and promoting the French language.

And then they asked for the French Academy to judge.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • In 1989, he received an award from the French Academy of Sciences for his research on fluid-structure interaction.

    Academic text (2005)

  • I told him all this as well when we met at a meeting of the French Academy in early March.

    Blog text (15)

  • And then they asked for the French Academy to judge.

    Robinson Erhardt

  • I told him all this when we met at a meeting of the French Academy in early March.

    Blog text (15)

  • " Pray, sir, are you the one sent by the French Academy to draw the Birds of America?

    Academic text (1999)

  • Ironically, her election to the French Academy fifteen years ago caused controversy for the opposite reasons.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • They include Roger Clarke, who chairs the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the Health Physics Society, and the French Academy of Sciences.

    Academic text (1999)

  • The French Academy had been struggling since the mid-17th century to regulate the French language, and English writers such as Jonathan Swift toyed with the idea of a comparable English Academy.

    Academic text (2008)

  • David was at the French Academy in Rome when the statue was completed and exhibited at the Salon of 1777, but for a number of years after his return it was kept in the Salle des Antiques of the Louvre, where David had a studio.

    Academic text (2000)

  • In the burgeoning French Academy of the 1660s, color and its relationship to design became a standard topic of formal as well as informal debate, generating an important and influential literature, especially by Felibien and De Piles.

    Academic text (1990)

Surface Forms

French Academy main

Morphology

French + academy

The compound is directly compositional: 'French' = relating to France/French language and 'academy' = a learned society, so a B1 learner who knows both words will infer it denotes an academy connected with France or the French language. They may not grasp the precise institutional role (e.g., the Académie française's authority over language matters), but the basic referent is predictable and cross-linguistically transparent.

Etymology

French Academy comes from a group of writers and scholars set up long ago to 'protect' the French 'language'. The word academy meant a place or group for study, so the name became the official body that makes 'rules' and publishes the 'dictionary' for French.