lèse-majesté
Sign in to saveAlso known as lese-majesty, lese-majeste, leze majesty, crimen laesae maiestatis, crimen laesae majestatis
thumbnail|John Bull farts on an image of [[George III. 1798 print by the English caricaturist Richard Newton.]]
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thumbnail|John Bull farts on an image of [[George III. 1798 print by the English caricaturist Richard Newton.]]
Lèse-majesté or lese-majesty ( , ; ; ) is an offence or defamation against the dignity of a ruling head of state (traditionally a monarch but now more often a president) or of the state itself. The English name for this crime is a borrowing from medieval Anglo-Norman French, where , or (among other variants) meant , which traces back to Classical Latin (), which was a form of treason against the emperor under the law of maiestas in Ancient Rome. The modern spellings are due to the later influence of modern French (in the case of lèse-majesté), and the gradual transformation of Anglo-Norman into a highly Anglicised form known as Law French (in the case of lese-majesty), which also accounts for the Anglicised pronunciation.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “lèse-majesté” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.