Sur un régionalisme flaubertien : quiques

Abstract

Flaubert’s vocabulary contains many rare words. The history and possible geography of some of them did not interest the specialists too much. This article examines the noun quiques in the sense of “toilets”. Although used a dozen times by the novelist in his travel diaries and correspondence, it is not well known in lexicography. Only two Norman lexicons from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries record it alongside quiqueron in the sense of “person who collects excrement”, a word classified by Wartburg in his article kik-. If the connection is not illusory, quiques can be linked to the onomatopeic etymon kik-, while emphasising that its area of distribution is restricted.