La voce “Économie politique” nei dizionari francesi del Settecento e dell’Ottocento

The growing and significant economic development, recorded in the 18th and 19th centuries in France, offers numerous reflections to conduct a diachronic study on the meaning evolution of the expression économie politique. This research is conducted primarily by consulting some French monolingual dictionaries, among the general and specialized ones, published in the 18th and 19th centuries. The earliest dictionary is the Dictionnaire universel by Antoine Furetière (1702) and the latest one is the Nouveau dictionnaire d’économie politique by Jean-Baptiste Say and Bert Chailley (1891). The thoughts of lexicographers and the studies of economists have given us the chance to trace the semantic evolution of économie politique over two centuries.