author
Antoine Furetière
1619–1688
A sharp-eyed observer of 17th-century Paris, this French writer is remembered for witty satire and for trying to capture everyday language in all its richness. His work helped push dictionaries beyond elegant literary words to include the terms of trades, sciences, and ordinary life.
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About the author
Born in Paris on December 28, 1619, Antoine Furetière studied law before taking holy orders, a path that gave him the income and freedom to write. He became known as a versatile man of letters: poet, satirist, novelist, and lexicographer, with a gift for noticing the details of social life.
He is especially remembered for Le Roman bourgeois (1666), a satirical novel that turned away from grand heroes and focused instead on the middle-class world of Paris. The book is often noted for its realism and its amused, sometimes biting, look at everyday manners.
Furetière was elected to the Académie française, but his career there ended in conflict when he pursued publication of his own dictionary. That work, the Dictionnaire universel, appeared after his death and became famous for including technical, scientific, and practical vocabulary alongside literary French. He died in Paris in 1688, leaving behind work that was lively, argumentative, and surprisingly modern in its attention to real language as people used it.