The Polytechnicien vernacular

In 1894, two École Polytechnique alumni, Albert Lévy (Year of Entry: 1863) and Gaston Pinet (Year of Entry: 1864) published their "dictionary" of the institution’s traditions, codes and slang entitled L’Argot de l’X (The Slang of l’X). The 326-page work lists the words that have become part of the l’X vernacular, such as casert, a student’s lodgings; conscrit, a freshman; and tangente, the sword that students wear "tangent" to the stripes on the pants of their uniform. The linguistic phenomenon known as apheresis, which involves getting rid of one or more phonemes at the beginning of a word, has also given birth to some of the everyday terms used at École Polytechnique. For instance, for the names of student associations, l’X students use the term binet, an abbreviation of cabinet, which once referred to a room other than a dormitory or a classroom. Another method called apocope consists of dropping phonemes at the end of a word. L’Argot de l’X includes terms created from this practice like coeff (number that determines the relative value assigned to each of the tests on an exam), exam (university exam), méca (mechanics) and labo (lab), which are all widely used in everyday French. Some Polytechnicien slang has even managed to make it beyond the walls of École Polytechnique and into official dictionaries of the French language. For example, laïus, meaning a long-winded speech, comes from the repeated references a particular literature professor would make to the misfortune of King Laius in the story of Oedipus. Students would then remark, "Here he goes again with his laïus." The word binôme (binomial), a mathematical term dating back to the 16th century, is used at l’X to refer to one’s roommate. Its use has been expanded in modern French to mean a partner in a team of two people. The verb sécher (to dry) is used when students do not want to study a certain part of their class or when they skip a chapter of a novel. Today, it is widely used in student spheres to mean skipping class. Two more editions of the dictionary were also published: Le Nouvel argot de l’X in 1936 and Le Dictionnaire de l’argot de l’X in 1994.