FURETIERE, ANTOINE, author of the Dictionnaire Universel de la Langue Française, was born at Paris in 1620. He first studied law, and practised for a time as an advocate, but finally entered the church, and became abbé of Chalivoy, and prior of Chuines. In his leisure moments he devoted himself to letters, and in virtue of his satires in prose and verse was admitted a member of the French
Academy in 1662. That learned body had long promised to the world a complete dictionary of the French tongue. Furetierre had already planned and executed a work of a similar nature which he was on the point of publishing when the Academy interfered, alleging that he had borrowed from their stores, and that they had the exclusive privilege of publishing such a work as that in question. After much bitter recrimination on both sides, Furetierre was expelled from the academy. For this act of cruel injustice he took a very severe revenge in his satire entitled Couches de l'Académie. His Dictionnaire Universel was published in Holland two years after his death, which happened in 1688. It was afterwards revised and improved by Bassage, who published his edition of it in 1701, and again in 1725. This work enjoyed a deservedly high reputation till the appearance of the Dictionnaire de Trevoux, which indeed is based on that of Furetierre. Furetierre's other works, consisting chiefly of satires and fables, do not possess any very great literary merit.