The French language dictionary Le Robert is accelerating the integration of vocabulary from new technologies and IT, with the entry into its new edition of words such as metaverse or cloud computing, the publisher announced on Tuesday May 9, 2023.
The metaverse is defined as a “persistent three-dimensional virtual universe that offers its users, represented by avatars, an interactive and immersive experience”. Cloud computing is a term imported from Canada to translate cloud anglicism: “all computer services (servers, applications, storage, etc.) accessible remotely via the Internet”.
Another term from this country: fureteur, generally called in France internet browser, and the verb browse on the Web, synonymous with surfing the Internet. The Robert 2024 also sees the arrival of the“generative artificial intelligence”defined as “able to produce new content (texts, images, sounds…)”like ChatGPT.
Mining, in other words the “validation, in exchange for remuneration, of a set of transactions carried out in cryptocurrency before registration on a blockchain”is accompanied by new meanings to the verb miner and to the common noun minor (feminine: “miner”). The webtoon is a “South Korean comic published online”. Crypto-art means the“set of digital works of art associated with an unforgeable title of ownership”.
Le Robert humorously records the return in the language of an obsolete technology, the floppy disk, which this time designates a “sentence, flattering formula, often heavy, intended to seduce someone”. According to its linguists, it is the old-fashioned side of the object that has earned it the hijacking of younger generations.