[by Françoise Nore]

There are two adjectives of form left ; one is used to indicate the spatial situation of a person or thing, the other qualifies a human whose clumsiness is emphasized. But this brief presentation conceals facts which are, in reality, much more complex.

The first adjective left is attested around 1225, with the spelling left ; it then means "badly done, crooked". It was not until 1660 that it was recorded with the meaning of "clumsy", familiar to French speakers. This new meaning, recorded by Antoine Oudin (1595-1653) in his dictionary entitled French curiosity, is based on a metaphor that is, if not fierce, at least bold: he who is clumsy can only be deformed; moreover, left "clumsy" is described by Oudin as "vulgar". In addition, the lexicographer cites the now-disappeared expression be on the left side, which he glosses as “[to be] bastard " Obviously, being labelled as left-wing in those early days was hardly flattering.

While this qualifier left thus changed meaning, there appeared, in 1471, another adjective with the same pronunciation, then written left, which meant "opposite the right side, on the side of the heart". However, there was already a perfect synonym for left "opposite the right side". This is sinister but, for unknown reasons, left eliminated sinister, yet widely used and very old in French, since the first written attestation of sinister dates back to around the year 1100, when it was written The Song of Roland. Left-footed therefore imposes itself; present in 1549 in its definitive spelling, it specializes in spatial indications before taking on in 1790, under the pen of Mirabeau, the political meaning that we know it for.

Now, if the etymology of right, from a Latin family which also includes words as different as lead ou erection, is transparent and well established, the same is not true for the two words left : their origin remains obscure, even unknown, and all the hypotheses put forward by lexicologists remain fragile and unverifiable, despite the abundance of ancient documents that have come down to us. Naturally, it is tempting to indulge in a kind of lexical allegory and to transpose, into the domain of politics, the fact that left is of unknown origin. It could also be noted that if sinister descends from Latin Sinister "left, on the left side", he is also the brother of sinister, since the latter is a borrowing from the same Sinister, which also had the meaning "unfortunate, fatal". The sum of these facts therefore constitutes a semantic family that is not very frequentable, but, out of charity, we will not speak of it; let us not show bad spirit.