A brief history of the word «civility»4 reading minutes

There are thousands of dictionaries and other resources available online today. So, with the help of a computer and a good Internet connection, you can have fun reconstructing the history of a word. Let's try it with «civilité».

Often criticized for its lack of scientific rigor, the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française is nonetheless an invaluable mine of information, since all its editions - nine, with the first dating back to 1694 and the last completed in 2024 - are easily accessible online. By switching from one edition to the next, we can attempt to trace the evolution of a word's meaning over at least three centuries.

In the «civilité» entry, however, we discover that the meaning of this word has changed little over the centuries. The 1694 edition reads: «Honnesteté, courtoisie, maniere h