"Cinquante nuances de board": anglicismes néologiques et équivalents autochtones dans le domaine des sports de glisse

Our paper starts by providing a brief report on the connections between sports, terminology and loanwords in contemporary French, highlighting the role of anglicisms and the important work carried out by the Commission spécialisée de terminologie et de néologie des sports. Our study deals with a sample of about 50 official terms from boardsports, which we illustrate through the semantic relations that these terms have. After having analysed the presence of loanwords and of their French equivalents in some contemporary dictionaries, both general and specialized, we try to measure the diffusion of these terms in Neoveille database, in L’Équipe.fr website and in Francophone web. It turns out that loanwords are much more widespread than their French equivalents, mainly for historical, geographical and socio-cultural reasons. Finally, we remark that variation affects boardsport vocabulary at more than one level and that semantic equivalence between official terms and loanwords is at times problematic.