Lampleur

Lampleur is a rarely used orthographic variant of the French noun ampleur, which denotes magnitude, extent or scope. It is not a standard lemma in modern French and is generally considered a misspelling or a typographical artifact, typically found in historical texts or as an OCR error in scanned documents.

Etymology and orthography: The standard term is ampleur, derived from Latin amplitude (from amplitudine). When preceded by a definite article before a vowel, the form l’ampleur is used and is written with a space between the article and the noun only in certain older typographies. The one-word form lampleur is not recognized as the correct spelling in contemporary French dictionaries and should be corrected to l’ampleur or ampleur in ordinary writing.

Usage: In current French usage, the correct forms are ampleur or l’ampleur (as in l’ampleur des dégâts). The single-word form lampleur is generally considered incorrect in standard orthography and should be avoided in edited texts. If encountered, it is usually attributable to a typographical mistake, a transcription error, or historical printing practices rather than a distinct lexical entry.

See also: Ampleur, the standard French term for magnitude or extent, and the topic of elision in French orthography, which explains the use of l’ before vowels.