Scrabble removes twenty words deemed “offensive” from its official list

Scrabble removes around 20 judged words “offensive” from its official list, France Inter learned on Wednesday June 28. Among these words are “tarlouze”, “dwarf”, “asian”, “queer”, “faggot”, “Roman” or “wife”. The Fédération internationale de Scrabble francophone (FISF) has just taken note of the withdrawal of 25 words and their variations for “ethical reasons”. judged “disrespectful of human values”they no longer appear in the ninth edition of The Scrabble Officialthe players’ bible, regularly published by the International Federation of Francophone Players and whose ninth edition was published in mid-June by Larousse editions.

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In a press release, the FISF indicates that it has withdrawn “about twenty words and their inflected forms” (include feminine and/or plural variants) because of their “hateful character, disrespectful of human values ​​and new sensitivities of our world”. In total, there are therefore 62 “forms” words that disappear.

Months of tense negotiations

According to information from France Inter, this decision was not unanimously accepted by the volunteers on the editorial board of The Scrabble Official who were initially not in favor of deleting any words. “For many months, the various bodies of the FISF met with the Larousse editions and/or with Mattel France in order to propose other solutions than the pure and simple deletion of a list of words that would be prohibited from play Scrabble” but “none of these solutions was adopted”explains to France Inter Florian Levy, president of the editorial board of The Scrabble Official.

Mattel finally agreed to reduce the number of words concerned, from a hundred words proposed to twenty. “A language is a language, and it must be taken in its totality, it is not by removing words from the Scrabble dictionary that we prevent their use”, blows to France Inter one of the members of the FISF, evoking sometimes very tense exchanges. Most of them still have their place in common dictionaries such as Le Robert.

At the origin of this request for deletion of words: Mattel, the American brand that owns the game. Already in the United States, a “cleaning” of the list of words had already been carried out a few years ago. The new edition of the book with the banned words will come into effect on January 1, 2024 for competitions.