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Quel tweets! The French Government has guillotined the Twitter term hashtag.

In a continuing battle to stop English words violating their mother tongue, the language gendarmes have decreed the nation must now refer to the global social network icon as mot-diese.

Teachers and the media are under orders to adopt it – and steer clear of using the English word.

The outlawing of hashtag is the latest in a stream of desperate bids by the nation’s stuffy Académie française authority to keep the language pure.

Already, the French culture ministry has a huge list of English words on its website which it fears are in danger of slipping into common French usage.

These include: email, blog, supermodel, take-away, parking, weekend and low-cost airline.

The site also features obscure terms that nobody would want to steal, such as detachable motor caravan and multifunctional industrial building.

The blacklist of vocabulary runs for 65 pages.

Scientists are told to no longer refer to “serial analysis of gene expression” and “suppression subtractive hybridization”.

Television sports commentators are even urged to stop using the words coach or corner during football matches, despite the fact that all its terms were invented in English by English speakers. They should instead say entraineur and coup de pied de coin.

The Official Journal, which publishes the French edicts, now says: “The English term hashtag should wherever possible be replaced with the French term mot-diese.”

Officials went into meltdown after a government report said Anglo-Saxon culture’s trend towards global domination had caused a “deep crisis”.

For the list see http://franceterme.culture.fr and click “rechercher”.