As long as it was seen as nothing more than an antisocial Anglo-Saxon habit, le binge drinking remained just that: an English term. As a sign of the changing times and the reported spread of the practice in France, however, the country's language police have decreed an official new term.
As of now, binge drinking does not happen in France. Instead, anyone consuming large quantities of alcohol in a short space of time with the intention of getting drunk is engaged in beuverie express.
The phrase, which translates literally as "fast drinking", was given the official approval of the culture ministry's general commission of terminology and neology on Sunday. The commission defined the term as "the massive absorption of alcohol, generally in a group, aimed at provoking drunkenness in the minimum amount of time".
Le Monde further qualified "massive absorption" as "more than 4-5 glasses in less than two hours", but failed to elucidate how big a glass or of what. » | Kim Willsher in Paris | Monday, July 29, 2013
