Top stories
![(Image source: @ Kinsta https://kinsta.com/ Kinsta]])](https://biz-file.com/c/2606/814361-300x156.jpg?2)
Marketing & Media#Cannes2026 | Should Africa care about the Cannes Lions?
Danette Breitenbach 22 Jun 2026
Marketing & Media947 Joburg Day 2026 transforms into a cultural playground with all-star line-up
Primedia Broadcasting 22 Jun 2026
Walk in the footsteps of SA schoolchildren and get them school shoes
Danette Breitenbach
Trending
Subscribe & Follow
Advertise your job vacancies
Jobs
- Digital Coordinator Pinetown
- Technology Journalist Johannesburg
- Creative Social Media Lead Cape Town
- Paid Media Specialist Johannesburg
- Digital Content & Project Specialist Johannesburg
'Allo 'Allo' ... 'ave I ze word for you!
30 Dec 2013
IOL reports the French, those masters (and presumably mistresses) of seduction, have come up with a word for sexting.
The French have the Academie Francaise - a respected institution that has a mission: to keep French pure. To that end, the institute regularly invents French terms for English terms that have crept into usage in France.
Paris, France - home of the 'textopornographie', qui!(Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Now we all know the French and seduction go together like, well, a courting couple, so it is no surprise it now has a word for sexting and IOL reports that "If you want to send sexually explicit photos or text messages to your lover in France, it's called "textopornographie".
The academy's Sophie Tonolo, a dictionary editor, quotes IOL, is reported as saying that the new word may not end up in the dictionary, "if the phenomenon fades".
With tears in my bloodshot eyes, as I sit here with a death grip on my... smartphone... what chance is there of the phenomenon fading?
It's not sexting, it's textopornographie... 'Ow about a leetil textopornographie, zen?
About Rod Baker
Rod Baker is Content Director at Bizcommunity.com. A journalist since before computers, he worked on a wide range of magazines and, in his youth, rose through the ranks from being a lowly and abused sub-editor, to a high and still abused editor and publisher. He has been editor and publisher of a number of magazines, as well as a newspaper. He has edited many books, and written a number too. Email him at moc.ytinummoczib@dor.