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French kiss: in France, there’s (finally) a word for that

French kiss: in France, there’s (finally) a word for that

A French kiss has been anything but — until now.

The smooching term with English roots finally has its own word in the French lexicon.

The verb "galocher" — translation: "to kiss with tongues" — was officially recognized by the latest edition of the popular Le Petit Robert French dictionary.

"The French have always had many expressions to describe it, such as 'kissing at length in the mouth', but it's true, we've never had one single word," Laurence Laporte of the Robert publishing house tells the Associated Press, adding that "galocher" was a slang term that had been around for a while "but only now is it being officially recognized in a French dictionary."

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"La galoche" is an ice-skating boot. The new kissing term essentially "riffs evocatively on the idea of sliding around the ice."

The phrase, once known as a "Florentine kiss," is often attributed to American soldiers who returned from WWI with some impressive kissing techniques picked up by "the more sexually adventurous French nationals they canoodled with abroad," TIME reports.

Laporte emphasizes that while the French didn't have an official word for kissing with tongues, it "never stopped us from doing it."

The Washington Post reports that it will still take time before "galocher" makes its way into France's standard dialect.

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"The Academie Francaise, the 378-year-old regulator of the French language, jealously guards the official dictionary against made-up words and foreign incursions, and there’s no mention of 'galocher' in there," Caitlin Dewey writes.

This doesn't mean people won't use the term.

"But since the Académie Française has little control over spoken French vernacular or the publishing norms of French magazines and newspapers, galocher has triumphed as the only published term for what English-speakers call 'French kissing," UPI reports.

As far as the general public is concerned, the French kiss is finally, and literally, French.