Maitriser la polysemie des mots, en France, entre 1730 et 1835: de l'abus des mots ou catachrese a l'extension ou troisième sens

Long before the coining of the term "polysemy" (Bréal 1897) the many senses of linguistic units have been analyzed, such as sacred, legal or literary texts, logical propositions, scholarly terms or simple words. This paper focuses on the two opposite methods of handling polysemy-before- the-word-existed developed by lexicographers and encyclopaedists in France, between the treatise Des Tropes by the grammarian philosopher Dumarsais (1730) and the 6th edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie (1835). It shows how close is Breal's notion of "polysemy" to the option of dividing the different meanings of a term according to the distinct domains of knowledge they are relevant to, as practiced by the encyclopaedists (d'Alembert, Beauzée), in order to remind that polysemy is not a pure fact but a theoretical and methodical option, related to some particular linguistic tasks (here, to make an inventory and a classification rather than to give an interpretation or a translation).