On the occasion of the publication, in June 2023, of the new edition of the dictionary which governs French-speaking Scrabble tournaments, Mattel, the company which publishes the famous game in France, requested the withdrawal of several words deemed offensive, reports

L 'Express

.

In total, 62 words have thus been excluded and can no longer be used in competition, such as "tarlouze", "pouffiasse", "jesuit" or even "boche".

Mattel's decision, taken last summer, would have as a starting point changes that had been made two years ago in the United States.

In July 2020, in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, the North American Scrabble Players Association announced that it wanted to ban more than 200 terms deemed insulting or discriminatory from the list of words used during tournaments.

A small revolution

Since then, Scrabble has undergone a small revolution.

During the graphic overhaul of the board game in 2021, Mattel had thus decided to add a rule in the manual present in the game box. "Any words constituting an incitement to hatred and discrimination are excluded" is- he now writes.

However, this formulation remained vague and could not be applied to the more than 15,000 competitive Scrabble players in France.

Last January, Mattel therefore called on a linguist to draw up a list of words to be removed.

Disappearance of nearly 110 words

Initially, 109 words were to disappear.

After negotiation with the editorial committee of the dictionary around the polysemy of some of these terms, only 62 words were finally retained by the International Federation of French-speaking Scrabble (FISF).





But for some members of the editorial board, as for some players, this decision remains incomprehensible, especially since the words withdrawn still appear in the Petit Larousse illustré, while the Scrabble dictionary is also published by Larousse.

Thus, for Hervé Bohbot, member of the editorial board, this choice is explained by the financial links that exist between the FISF and Mattel.

More independent, the Spanish Federation refused to make these withdrawals.

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