The Dictionnaire de l'Académie française is the official dictionary of the French language in France.
The Académie française is France's official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language, although its recommendations carry no legal power. Sometimes, even governmental authorities disregard the Académie's rulings.
A special Commission (Commission du dictionnaire) composed of several (but not all) of the members of the Académie undertakes the compilation of the dictionary. The Académie has completed eight editions of the dictionary, which were published in 1694, 1718, 1740, 1762, 1798, 1835, 1878, and 1935. The 8th edition of 1935 contained approximately 35,000 words.
The Académie continues work on the ninth edition, begun in 1986, of which the first volume (A to Enzyme) was published in 1992, and the second (Éocène to Mappemonde) in 2000. As the work goes on, additional parts of the Dictionnaire are published in the Documents administratifs of the Journal Officiel, and posted online. The finalized ninth edition is expected to contain more than 15,000 new words. In part because the current edition dates from 1935, other dictionaries (such as those published by Larousse and Le Robert) are more commonly used as everyday reference sources than the Académie's.
In 1778, the Académie attempted to compile a "historical dictionary" of the French language; this idea, however, was later abandoned, the work never progressing past the letter A.
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