Abstract: This article examines in detail the usefulness of the electronic database Frantext when it comes to study the time of appearance of neologisms. We take the example of feeling words between the Middle French and the contemporary period. After some preliminary methodological principles (study of combinatorial profile, study of relationships between neologisms and words of the same morphological family, study of the inclusion of the neologism in a network of paradigmatic oppositions or in a network of metaphors, study of epilinguistic judgments), we examine the properties and functionalities of the Frantext database. It appears that despite some shortcomings in terms of quantity and distribution of the data, Frantext is an indispensable tool for examining neologisms appearing in general French, particularly before the nineteenth century.
