Galocher: France finally gets a word for 'French kiss'

If you've ever wondered what "French kissing" is called in France, the word is "galocher," (pronounced ga-losh-ay) and the term for kissing with tongues has been part of French vernacular for years.

But the verb will appear for the first time in the 2014 edition of the popular "Le Petit Robert" dictionary, which hits shelves today. Although longer expressions existed in French to describe that particular type of kissing, coining the short, slang term galocher made sense to the Le Robert publishing house.

The Académie Française, however, makes no mention of galocher. The 378-year-old regulator of the French language guards the official dictionary against foreign and invented words, famously excluding weekend, e-mail and "la Presidente" to describe a female president.

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."