Pierre Lellouche, a minister with a reputation for a sharp tongue, deeply regretted causing offence by calling British Tories autistic, but he also blamed his interviewer’s poor grasp of French, according to his spokesman.

“Pierre Lellouche fully understands the emotion that has been aroused and bitterly regrets that he may have wounded people,” said Franck Allisio. “The words used obviously do not reflect the substance of his thought and the clumsiness was completely unintended.”

Three words seem to have failed to make a jump into English. The first, and most controversial, was when Mr Lellouche reproached the Conservatives for “a very bizarre sense of autism” in an interview with The Guardian. The word has become popular in recent years in colloquial French to refer to anyone who is stubborn and does not listen. An equivalent in English might be “deaf to” or similar expression.

“In French, the term autistic has been totally trivialised through overuse. President Sarkozy is called autistic every day,” the spokesman said. “I understand that in English that this word could shock. That was a glitch. It was a misunderstanding.”

Mr Lellouche called Tory hostility to the EU “pathetic” — but in French pathétique means lamentable. He also said that Tory policies had “castrated” them, but it is possible that he said émasculé — emasculated — rather than châtré. The remarks came from a conversation in a car rather than the inteview, Mr Allisio said.

Patrick Sadoun, a member of the Sesame Autism Association in France, said: “The English are right to be shocked. I congratulate a country that reacts to this. I am horrified that French politicians, at the slightest occasion, call one another autistic.”

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