limoger

French

Etymology

From Limoges +‎ -er. From the town of Limoges, which was far away from the World War I front and where General Joseph Joffre, Commander-in-Chief of the French forces from 1914 to 1916, consequently sent senior staff whom he considered useless and had relieved from actual command. Attested since 1916.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /li.mɔ.ʒe/

• Audio (Lyon, France)

  (file)

Verb

limoger

1. (transitive) to dismiss (usually of senior staff, such as a minister, general, bishop, ambassador, etc), kick upstairs
   • 1927, Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouvé [Time Regained] (À la recherche du temps perdu)‎:

     M^me Verdurin disait : « C’est désolant, je vais téléphoner à Bontemps de faire le nécessaire pour demain, on a encore « caviardé » toute la fin de l’article de Norpois et simplement parce qu’il laissait entendre qu’on avait « limogé » Percin. »

     Mme Verdurin said, “It is deplorable, I shall telephone to Bontemps to do what is necessary to-morrow. They have again ‘censored’ the whole end of Norpois' article simply because he let it be understood that they had ‘dismissed’ Percin.”

     translated by Stephen Hudson

   • 2021 June 30, “Corée du Nord : plusieurs hauts responsables limogés après un «grave incident» lié au Covid-19 [North Korea: several senior officials sacked after a "serious incident" linked to Covid-19]”, in Le Figaro‎:

     Le dirigeant nord-coréen Kim Jong Un a limogé plusieurs hauts responsables du pays en raison d’un «grave incident» lié à la lutte contre la pandémie de Covid-19, a annoncé mercredi 30 juin l’agence officielle KCNA.

     The North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has sacked several senior officials of the country because of a "serious incident" linked to the struggle against the Covid-19 pandemic, reported the official agency KCNA on Wednesday 30 June.

Conjugation

This is a regular -er verb, but the stem is written limoge- before endings that begin with -a- or -o- (to indicate that the -g- is a "soft" /ʒ/ and not a "hard" /ɡ/). This spelling-change occurs in all verbs in -ger, such as neiger and manger.

Further reading

• “limoger”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.