Rey was born in
Pont-du-Château (Puy-de-Dôme) on 30 August 1928. After studying
political science,
humanities and
art history at the
Sorbonne, Rey served in the 4th Regiment of the Tunisian Troops. While stationed in
Algeria in 1952, he replied to an advertisement placed by
Paul Robert, who was compiling a new French dictionary and looking for linguists. Rey become Robert's first collaborator, on
Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique. Robert's network of lexicographers grew and Rey married his colleague
Josette Debove in 1954. In 1964 the very first
Le Robert dictionary was published, followed by an abridged
Le Petit Robert in 1967. Rey went on to supervise the publication of many more dictionaries under the Le Robert trademark: the
Petit Robert (1967); the
Micro Robert, a pocket dictionary; the
Petit Robert des noms propres (1974), a guide to proper names; the
Dictionnaire des expressions et locutions (1979), a dictionary of phrases and expressions; the
Grand Robert de la langue française, a nine-volume work (1985); an updated version, the
Nouveau Petit Robert de la langue française (1993), and the
Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (1992). On 20 October 2016 a new and expanded edition of the
Dictionnaire historique was published in two volumes. His last segment with France Inter, broadcast on 29 June 2006, examined the word
salut ("goodbye"). Between 2004 and 2005, Rey also appeared after the 8 o'clock evening news on the channel
France 2, in a segment entitled
Démo des Mots, in which he explained the history of French financial jargon. In 2005, the French Minister of Culture and Communication awarded him the title of Commander in the French
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Literature). Rey was also a signatory of the
Appel à la vigilance contre le néocréationnisme et les intrusions spiritualistes en science ("Call to vigilance against creationism and religious interference with science"), published in France in December 2005. Since September 2007, Rey had appeared on
Laurent Baffie's Sunday morning radio show on
Europe 1. Rey died in October 2020, aged 92. == Internet celebrity ==