Diary 2021-07-07

I went on vacation last week, so this is an update on various French activities here and there.

This morning I listened to a couple of episodes of the Français Authentique podcast: Faire chou blanc and Je ne progresse plus en français. Que faire? (can’t find a link). They are slow and simple, but not too simple. Decent mindless content while walking, good for reinforcement.

Yesterday I took the placement exam for my 2-week course in August with ILA (Institut Linguistique Adenet) in Montpellier. The school is in Montpellier, but I will be in my living room doing the course by video conference. Traveling to France in summer 2021 was too daunting for post-pandemic me. The test had 100 questions, multiple choice, with an “I don’t know” option for each one. The instructions exhorted me not to guess, for my own benefit, as it’s a diagnostic instrument. Most of the questions were about grammar, 10 or 15 were about oral comprehension, and a handful were about vocabulary. I’d say 60 or 70 felt automatic, another 10-20 required deliberate application of a rule I knew, and the rest were either unknown to me or involved a forgotten entry in a rarely used part of the conjugation table of an irregular verb.

Speaking of Montpellier, one of the other guests at the inn where we was staying was a French woman who had lived all her life in Montpellier before coming to the US some 10 years ago. Had a nice conversation with her. She runs a library-based French conversation group in Pittsburgh.

On vacation I finished the next 1931 Maigret novel, Le chien jaune. It started fairly vaguely, with scattered episodes only loosely connected, and making barely an impression on Maigret. Eventually it all came together to a satisfactory, if not gripping, resolution.

I read a short play, Un pas après l’autre, which appeared in L’avant scène théâtre, numéro 1493, December 2020. Somehow it was only published in July, though it reached me in June? Whatever. Two middle aged sisters with funny rapport, a failing haute-couture shop, a son recovering from PTSD after time in prison for a homicide he was convicted of while a juvenile, which he insists he didn’t commit, a fashion designer intern, a contest for newcomers to the field. Good dialogue, nice character development, then the play ends suddenly with not much story or dénouement. Pity, I liked the set up.

Finally, I had my regular weekly French lesson yesterday with Nora. A lot of it was my relating the story of witnessing a car accident during our vacation, and of various parties’ assisting the driver. Vocabulary words or expressions that came up:

pluvieuse, pluvieux, le brouillard, s’allonger, un ruisseau, renverser, un fuyard, le dénivelé, accroché, fixé, un virage, faire un tonneau, ça nous a pris, elle s’est précipitée, elle s’est ruée, elle s’est hâtée, à portée de voix, à portée de vue, je suis retourné à ma voiture, j’ai repris ma voiture, le caissier/la caissière, les secours, il a eu l’air de, une trousse de premiers secours, il enchaînait, il tremblait, saigner, une hémorragie, un rapport, informer, civière, civet, il réussissait à marcher, un coussin gonflable, bousillé, nous n’étions pas pressés, nous n’avions pas de presse, on s’est mis d’accord, du travail dans le vide, découler.

I think that’s it. All done with vacation, back to ordinary life. Probably less French activity.

Vocab list: La Tête d’un Homme, Part 2

This is the second (and last) batch of unfamiliar vocabulary words I culled from George Simenon’s 1931 novel La Tête d’un Homme. These words appear in chapters 6- 12. In past vocabulary list posts I included only words and expressions I couldn’t recall even in context. In this list, I’ve included any word I didn’t think I would recognize and know the meaning of if I saw it in complete isolation. So the list is longer than usual.

See Vocab list: La Tête d’un Homme, Part 1 for the words from chapters 1-5, as well as my musings on the novel itself.

Here’s the list of all 50 unfamiliar words, sorted by modern word frequency.

expression (root)Frequency in 2010Frequency in 1970Frequency in 1930
machin1 in 19,0001 in 12,5001 in 16,100
bergère1 in 85,0001 in 88,3001 in 82,400
timbre1 in 116,0001 in 67,4001 in 29,900
ronger1 in 142,0001 in 171,0001 in 148,000
caserne1 in 177,0001 in 181,0001 in 171,000
infime1 in 183,0001 in 203,0001 in 188,000
cachet1 in 198,0001 in 140,0001 in 113,000
velléité1 in 275,0001 in 446,0001 in 335,000
sursis1 in 279,0001 in 218,0001 in 271,000
apparat1 in 308,0001 in 316,0001 in 333,000
fichu1 in 325,0001 in 617,0001 in 560,000
tare1 in 327,0001 in 253,0001 in 149,000
rafale1 in 332,0001 in 388,0001 in 554,000
épave1 in 346,0001 in 371,0001 in 345,000
piètre1 in 357,0001 in 678,0001 in 691,000
râle1 in 358,0001 in 450,0001 in 339,000
pignon1 in 398,0001 in 386,0001 in 233,000
décousu1 in 427,0001 in 686,0001 in 707,000
délabré1 in 516,0001 in 683,0001 in 650,000
flairer1 in 544,0001 in 450,0001 in 386,000
ployer1 in 634,0001 in 470,0001 in 342,000
tamiser1 in 640,0001 in 1,120,0001 in 896,000
fourvoyer1 in 732,0001 in 1,090,0001 in 1,190,000
boutade1 in 745,0001 in 523,0001 in 442,000
bigarré1 in 773,0001 in 860,0001 in 493,000
démiurge1 in 805,0001 in 1,110,0001 in 2,180,000
à son gré1 in 844,0001 in 391,0001 in 259,000
hécatombe1 in 993,0001 in 1,120,0001 in 1,070,000
tripoter1 in 954,0001 in 1,880,0001 in 2,990,000
bousculade1 in 1,020,0001 in 1,280,0001 in 1,240,000
persienne1 in 1,180,0001 in 1,170,0001 in 987,000
fêlure1 in 1,220,0001 in 2,170,0001 in 2,610,000
penderie1 in 1,430,0001 in 3,580,0001 in 9,600,000
rabrouer1 in 1,460,0001 in 2,740,0001 in 2,540,000
tintamarre1 in 1,750,0001 in 2,110,0001 in 2,340,000
venelle1 in 1,990,0001 in 3,630,0001 in 3,790,000
jambages1 in 2,350,0001 in 1,710,0001 in 1,370,000
bourrade1 in 2,500,0001 in 2,950,0001 in 2,820,000
dégringolade1 in 2,500,0001 in 4,910,0001 in 4,060,000
mercerie1 in 2,510,0001 in 949,0001 in 1,750,000
griserie1 in 2,590,0001 in 1,850,0001 in 1,380,000
polichinelle1 in 2,960,0001 in 4,040,0001 in 2,880,000
à brûle-pourpoint1 in 3,090,0001 in 4,740,0001 in 3,980,000
roulier1 in 3,930,0001 in 3,120,0001 in 2,390,000
veinard1 in 4,010,0001 in 8,270,0001 in 8,520,000
cabotin1 in 4,030,0001 in 2,900,0001 in 2,320,000
brouiller les cartes1 in 6,120,0001 in 7,690,0001 in 13,100,000
bitte1 in 6,460,0001 in 8,610,0001 in 13,300,000
se griser1 in 15,900,0001 in 11,000,0001 in 5,880,000
haut-le-coeur1 in 74,800,0001 in 132,000,0001 in 193,000,000
tache de son1 in 94,500,0001 in 111,000,0001 in 89,600,000

Word notes

  • un machin is a funny, slang word, quite common in modern speech and print. I somehow hadn’t registered encountering it before now. It is a close synonym of the words truc and bidule. The word means a non-specific object, akin to the English “thingy”, “thing-a-ma-bob”, or “what-cha-ma-call-it”. You use it when you don’t know or have forgotten the name for something, or when you refer to a large collection of disparate things. It is also used to refer to a person in a pejorative and dismissive fashion, like “what’s his name” or “somebody or other.” You don’t know the person’s name, but it’s really of no interest or importance. Simenon uses it in a police officer’s description of a run down hotel: «L’auberge est rien de luxueux… un machin pour les rouliers» (“the hotel is nothing fancy… a hole in the wall for truckers.” Note that the word machin should not be confused with une machine, which is more or less exactly the English “machine”: a reputable mechanical object used for sewing, cleaning, manufacture, construction, etc.

    I found multiple interesting treatments of the word un machin while researching, including this French Word of the Day post and this Français Authentique video:
  • taches de son are freckles. They are also called taches de rousseur or simply rousseurs. It took me a good 15 minutes of sleuthing to figure out why this expression aligned with its meaning. It turns out that son has multiple meanings: a third-person singular possessive pronoun; a sound that you hear; and … part of the outer envelope of a wheat kernel, what we call “bran” in english. Turns out this is a readily available product. Moreover, the processes of milling wheat into flour includes an intermediate product before final filtering where you have mostly flour, but with some specks of bran still mixed in. It appears mostly white, with some darker spots of bran. Thus, taches de son.
  • une rafale is a gust of wind, strong and sudden. Not to be confused with la rafle, which is the stem to which grapes attach. I learned that word during a winery tour in France. Curiously, neither of these seems to be most frequent meaning present in search results for these words. La rafale is also the name of a French fighter jet, while une rafle means a police round-up notably of Jews in World War II (the subject of a 2010 film) and of Algerians during their 1958-62 war for independence.
  • un haut-le-coeur is a shudder, typically of nausea or disgust. Also what one might experience after gulping strong spirits.
  • un cabotin is a ham actor, and le cabotinage means “histrionics”. The word comes from M. Cabotin, a charismatic 17th century French actor and charlatan promoter of miracle cures. The word is undoubtedly negative, though was perhaps rehabilitated somewhat by French singer Charles Aznavour in his song Le Cabotin.
Polichinelle marionnette from late 1800s.
  • Polichinelle is the French name of a character from the Italian commedia dell’arte theater tradition. It is Pulcinella in Italian. The character migrated to the marionnette and puppet theater, and into the English language as Punch (as in a “Punch and Judy show”). In modern French, the word un polichinelle can mean not only the character himself or a marionnette or doll in that form, but also an easily swayed, foolish person. However by far the most frequent use of the word is in the expression un secret de polichinelle, meaning “an open secret”: that which everyone knows but no one is supposed to speak of.

Common words, uncommon meanings

  • un cachet is a word with multiple meanings. It can be a stamp or a seal placed upon a document. That’s how Simenon uses it here («les pages [de son passeport] étaient couvertes de cachets et de visas»). But it can also mean stylistic originality (which is the meaning of the appropriated word in English). And the first meaning I learned for this word in school was “pill” or “tablet”. All of these derive from the common sense of “to stamp” or “to press”– pills are powder pressed into a form, seals are embossed marks pressed into a document. But there’s one more meaning which I don’t understand. Un cachet can mean a fee for a private lesson, or an appearance fee for a public performer or speaker. Not sure how that ties in with the other meanings.
  • un timbre has two meanings: the quality of a sound (or the sound itself); or, a stamp applied to a paper to certify a payment (postage stamp, tax receipt, etc.) After using un cachet for a passport stamp, Simenon uses timbre for the sound of a bell.
  • un pignon is both a pine tree and a small toothed gear in a mechanism (think “rack and pinion steering”). I’m not sure which meaning is more common, but Simenon used it in the tree sense here («un ruban de Seine aperçu entre deux pignons»).
Une bergère (sans Louis)
  • une bergère is a shepherdess, but was also the name of a popular style of low, spacious arm chair starting in 1725, growing popular under Louis XV. Given he was king for nearly 60 years, it’s quite likely such a chair was literally under Louis XV at some point

Vocab list: La Tête d’un Homme, Part 1

Earlier this week I finished reading George Simenon’s 1931 novel La Tête d’un Homme, the fifth adventure of the famous commissaire Maigret. It spans 135 pages in the Tout Maigret edition from Omnibus and took me just 3 days of reading to get through – summer evenings are good for that. I noted 101 unfamiliar words as I read, though I’ve tightened my standards for familiarity. In earlier posts I included only words and expressions I couldn’t recall even in context. In this list, I’ve included any word I didn’t think I would recognize and know the meaning of if I saw it in complete isolation. So the list is longer than usual. In fact it is so long, I’m going to split it into two posts so that I don’t tire of writing and my readers don’t tire of reading. I’ve posted the first batch of fifty below, with links to definitions from Linguee and word frequencies from Google Books NGram Viewer.

The novel is pretty good, though it still has that pre-Agatha-Christie style of setting up some exotic and even grotesque situation in advance, and then only revealing it to the reader bit by bit. There’s no puzzle for the reader to figure out, and the whole thing is so contrived as to be unbelievable. Add to that some melodrama and mustache-twirling level cartoon villain, and you’ll know what to expect. Yet with all that, it was a good book. The plot that unspools – an obviously framed man goes to jail protesting his innocence but going silent in the face of incriminating evidence; Inspector Maigret anonymously orchestrates the man’s escape in order to trail him afterwards; the suspect gives Maigret the slip and then re-emerges in unexpected ways; the true villain finally appears and loses to Maigret in a battle of wits – is entertaining and at times original. There’s even a fair number of action scenes that successfully generate suspense and surprise outcomes. And Maigret seems far from infallible, which is an important ingredient for a detective series. So all in all a good direction for the series to be going.

The unfamiliar words are disproportionately about positions body’s can be found in and verbs that change them: avachi (slumped), s’affaler (slouch, sprawl), jucher (perch), bosselé (dented, deformed), califourchon (stradling), un loque (a wreck), coudoyer (jostle, press up against), chanceler (wobble, falter), frôler (brush, nudge), entre quatre yeux (head-to-head).

Here’s the first part of the list, from chapters 1- 5, sorted by modern word frequency. Recall that the value is estimated by counting all words in all French books Google knows about in the given decade. For comparison, the masculine definite article le occurs with a frequency of 1 in 60, while all the union of all articles (le, la, les, un, une, de, des) taken together account for 1 in 8 words. .

expression (root)Frequency in 2010Frequency in 1970Frequency in 1930
écho1 in 29,1001 in 46,5001 in 57,900
rame1 in 144,0001 in 139,0001 in 125,000
cordon1 in 159,0001 in 122,0001 in 74,000
frôler1 in 183,0001 in 351,0001 in 391,000
greffier1 in 237,0001 in 125,0001 in 82,300
soulier1 in 243,0001 in 162,0001 in 143,000
broyer1 in 250,0001 in 210,0001 in 172,000
bribe1 in 266,0001 in 641,0001 in 845,000
broncher1 in 329,0001 in 365,0001 in 235,000
terne1 in 383,0001 in 304,0001 in 252,000
renifler1 in 403,0001 in 977,0001 in 1,500,000
grignoter1 in 437,0001 in 985,0001 in 1,590,000
chanceler1 in 497,0001 in 471,0001 in 392,000
pneumatique1 in 545,0001 in 207,0001 in 307,000
jucher1 in 570,0001 in 833,0001 in 839,000
pétiller1 in 602,0001 in 1,060,0001 in 884,000
éperdument1 in 699,0001 in 988,0001 in 731,000
ornière1 in 730,0001 in 746,0001 in 735,000
blafarde1 in 777,0001 in 967,0001 in 856,000
écroulement1 in 796,0001 in 568,0001 in 507,000
rixe1 in 857,0001 in 875,0001 in 793,000
carrosserie1 in 930,0001 in 757,0001 in 451,000
glabre1 in 1,020,0001 in 432,0001 in 224,000
affaler1 in 1,030,0001 in 2,230,0001 in 3,300,000
loque1 in 1,060,0001 in 769,0001 in 497,000
cuir chevelu1 in 1,330,0001 in 2,410,0001 in 1,100,000
froissement1 in 1,340,0001 in 1,260,0001 in 725,000
douille1 in 1,390,0001 in 995,0001 in 648,000
califourchon1 in 1,580,0001 in 2,480,0001 in 2,400,000
remorqueur1 in 1,660,0001 in 841,0001 in 317,000
débardeur1 in 1,690,0001 in 2,810,0001 in 2,820,000
avachi1 in 1,790,0001 in 4,440,0001 in 7,990,000
potelé1 in 1,830,0001 in 2,580,0001 in 2,220,000
planton1 in 1,920,0001 in 2,170,0001 in 2,010,000
crépu1 in 1,980,0001 in 2,190,0001 in 1,730,000
falot1 in 2,160,0001 in 1,370,0001 in 1,020,000
bosselée1 in 2,610,0001 in 1,830,0001 in 915,000
bock1 in 3,380,0001 in 3,380,0001 in 1,910,000
lorgnon1 in 3,560,0001 in 2,130,0001 in 1,150,000
sidi1 in 4,100,0001 in 8,580,0001 in 10,500,000
coudoyer1 in 4,760,0001 in 1,600,0001 in 779,000
cahin-caha1 in 4,830,0001 in 7,480,0001 in 8,690,000
se morfondre1 in 4,980,0001 in 10,600,0001 in 11,500,000
à portée de voix1 in 6,280,0001 in 13,900,0001 in 28,300,000
rapin1 in 7,260,0001 in 4,310,0001 in 2,510,000
sauterie1 in 9,020,0001 in 13,000,0001 in 8,490,000
triporteur1 in 10,100,0001 in 9,220,0001 in 61,700,000
entre quatre yeux1 in 25,700,0001 in 48,800,0001 in 71,900,000
pot de grès1 in 38,100,0001 in 32,800,0001 in 24,400,000

Word notes

  • un triporteur is a 3-wheeled cycle, with one wheel in back and two wheels in front on either side of a box or trunk for cargo. These were popular for delivering cargo or for peddlers to go around town selling their wares, though the word was super rare in writings of the time. The item and the word are still in common use in modern France.
  • glabre means “hairless”, either from shaving or from baldness. It was a fairly common adjective in 1930, but has been falling since 1950 and is now a one-in-a-million rarity.
  • cahin-caha describes a slow, erratic pace of progress; patchy, staggered, or struggling.
  • un remorqueur is a tug boat. Tug boats were increasingly big in France for about 70 years, reaching their peak mention just a few years before this book was published. Then there was a sudden crash (the Depression?) and things never recovered.
  • se morfondre is a great verb, meaning to languish or to mope. Apparently folks do that twice as often now as they did 90 years ago.means “hairless”, either from shaving or from baldness. It was a fairly common adjective in 1930, but has been falling since 1950 and is now a one-in-a-million rarity.
  • sidi is an honorific title for a man from North Africa, but also is an ethnic label: Commissaire! criait le sidi qu’on poussait vers la porte.

Common words, uncommon meanings

  • un écho is a sonic reflection, of course, but it can also mean a newspaper column dedicated to gossip and anecdotes about politicians, celebrities, etc. Here is was the vehicle for the paper to print a titillating anonymous letter claiming the prison escape was actually orchestrated by the police.
  • une rame is an oar or a paddle, but less commonly means a train: Des rames de métro ébranlaient un pont proche.
  • un cordon is a rope or string, typically for a curtain or bell. But it is also an archaic term for a rope used by a concierge to open the door of a building. In that context, «demander le cordon» means “ask to be let in”.
  • une bribe is a scrap, a snippet, a shred. This is not to be confused with the english “bribe”, a payment to induce an official to act against their duty. In French, the verb to bribe is soudoyer, while the noun for a bribe is the colorful pot-de-vin – jug of wine. Curious that the French bribe has steadily become more common, tripling in frequency in 80 years.
  • un pneumatique in modern parlance is a tire, usually shortened to un pneu. But in 1931 it referred to a message delivered by pressurized air tube. Paris had an extensive network of pneumatic tubes that remained in operation for over 100 years, from 1868 all the way through until 1984! I am old enough to have encountered such a system in the 1970s in the New England hospital where my father worked. I find the notion of a city-wide network astonishing.
Pressurized air tubes carried message-filled canisters throughout 1880’s Paris, and for 100 years thereafter!

La Tête d’Un Homme

Update 2021-06-21: I finished this 135-page book in just three days, but collected many unfamiliar vocabulary words. It’s taking me some time to enter and research them. Vocab list coming in a post later this week.

I couldn’t sleep last night (2021-06-18), so I started the next Maigret novel in the series, La tête d’un homme (1931). It’s pretty quick going – in 3 hours or so I read 60 pages, which is a little under a half of the novel. I’m noting unfamiliar words and expressions as I go, but I’ll hold off from posting them until I’ve finished the book.

The story has an entertaining setup. Chapter 1 sees Maigret, a judge, and a prison official lurking in the shadows of a prison courtyard while an inmate effects an escape. We learn that, unbeknownst to the prisoner, the escape was arranged by Maigret himself as a way to test his hypothesis that the man is innocent of the crime for which he’s been condemned to death. Something about the evidence in the case has been nagging at Maigret, and he’s convinced the others to go along with the charade in hopes of tracking down the real culprit. Maigret guarantees that all will be well, and offers to resign should something go awry. Naturally, the escapee slips through the police surveillance and Maigret has only 10 days to save his career and find the convicted man… or perhaps the actual criminal instead.

Like many of the early Maigret books, this one has a lot of scenes in bars and a lot of river activity. So I’m dusting off my remembrances of chopine, juché, and acajou, as well as of péniches, remorqueurs, débardeurs and the like.

Vocab list: Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien

I just finished reading George Simenon’s 1931 novel Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien, the fourth adventure of the famous commissaire Maigret. It spans 122 pages in the “Tout Maigret” edition from Omnibus and took me 18 days of occasional bedtime reading to get through. I noted 78 unfamiliar words as I read. I’ve posted them below, with links to definitions from Linguee and word frequencies from Google Books NGram Viewer.

The novel is only OK, at best. It’s got a murder, two suicides, extortion, forgery, a secret society, assumed identities, and just a soupçon of anti-semitism. Plus, part of it takes place in Germany, so you get Simenon’s impression of that country in 1931 – an interesting time in Franco-Prussian relations. On the whole it’s not much of a mystery, more like a convoluted tale of Bohemian youth gone wild that Maigret happens to stumble upon long after the fact. There’s no sense of danger and little intrigue. But I still have no hesitation about turning the page and diving into the next novel in the tome.

The unfamiliar words are disproportionately about poverty: worn out fabrics, falling apart shoes, cheap suitcases, dilapidated shacks, dirty neighborhoods, ruffian children, low quality merchants. Also a moderate amount of industry: torches, saws, acid baths, printing presses and workshops. There’s a little bit at the other end of the wealth spectrum: flowery scarves, bribed high officials, fancy cars, banking deals, patented systems, savored brandy. And finally there’s a lot of highfalutin descriptions: chiseled features, fleshy limbs, jerky movements, burnished tables, crimson faces and so on.

Here’s the list, sorted by modern word frequency. Recall that the value is estimated by counting all words in all French books Google knows about in the given decade. For comparison, the masculine definite article le occurs with a frequency of 1 in 60, while all the union of all articles (le, la, les, un, une, de, des) taken together account for 1 in 8 words. I don’t have on hand the estimate of what number of distinct French words have a frequency greater than 1 in N, but I’m interested in finding that distribution at some point.

expression (root)Frequency in 2010Frequency in 1970Frequency in 1930
bassin1 in 36,7001 in 25,6001 in 24,700
combinaison1 in 47,0001 in 36,4001 in 30,600
maintes1 in 68,4001 in 45,5001 in 37,200
trame1 in 84,5001 in 110,0001 in 144,000
sanguine1 in 99,0001 in 86,6001 in 52,600
revers1 in 105,0001 in 105,0001 in 108,000
ébaucher1 in 126,0001 in 77,5001 in 74,000
friser1 in 159,0001 in 158,0001 in 124,000
sangle1 in 255,0001 in 264,0001 in 239,000
butin1 in 261,0001 in 267,0001 in 262,000
huissier1 in 263,0001 in 176,0001 in 122,000
éparpiller1 in 266,0001 in 391,0001 in 402,000
âpre1 in 277,0001 in 186,0001 in 122,000
morne1 in 287,0001 in 216,0001 in 148,000
hétéroclite1 in 325,0001 in 621,0001 in 901,000
pignon1 in 398,0001 in 386,0001 in 233,000
échevin1 in 416,0001 in 207,0001 in 159,000
saccade1 in 426,0001 in 554,0001 in 465,000
humer1 in 452,0001 in 642,0001 in 607,000
parvis1 in 532,0001 in 820,0001 in 767,000
boyau1 in 576,0001 in 631,0001 in 427,000
breveté1 in 594,0001 in 487,0001 in 294,000
honnir1 in 622,0001 in 1,000,0001 in 924,000
charnu1 in 632,0001 in 508,0001 in 331,000
encastrés1 in 730,0001 in 549,0001 in 427,000
cambrer1 in 749,0001 in 1,210,0001 in 1,070,000
espiègle1 in 753,0001 in 2,000,0001 in 1,640,000
frileux1 in 759,0001 in 1,490,0001 in 1,250,000
fourgon1 in 787,0001 in 1,010,0001 in 907,000
jonc1 in 892,0001 in 589,0001 in 475,000
taudis1 in 906,0001 in 561,0001 in 529,000
chope1 in 927,0001 in 2,730,0001 in 3,080,000
cramoisi1 in 936,0001 in 1,210,0001 in 738,000
fatras1 in 992,0001 in 887,0001 in 757,000
écheveler1 in 1,010,0001 in 1,060,0001 in 977,000
glaise1 in 1,010,0001 in 821,0001 in 728,000
copeaux1 in 1,040,0001 in 706,0001 in 758,000
quincaillerie1 in 1,180,0001 in 738,0001 in 1,470,000
fusain1 in 1,370,0001 in 1,980,0001 in 1,330,000
sommier1 in 1,400,0001 in 988,0001 in 1,060,000
cabanon1 in 1,450,0001 in 3,710,0001 in 3,590,000
camelot1 in 1,450,0001 in 1,190,0001 in 954,000
astiquer1 in 1,690,0001 in 2,260,0001 in 2,880,000
pègre1 in 1,700,0001 in 2,210,0001 in 4,490,000
canif1 in 1,720,0001 in 1,740,0001 in 1,440,000
miteux1 in 1,820,0001 in 3,910,0001 in 8,080,000
brocanteur1 in 1,920,0001 in 2,290,0001 in 1,880,000
échancrer1 in 1,960,0001 in 644,0001 in 373,000
buriner1 in 2,140,0001 in 2,270,0001 in 2,340,000
s’emballer1 in 2,160,0001 in 11,500,0001 in 11,100,000
pelisse1 in 2,170,0001 in 1,680,0001 in 1,070,000
chalumeau1 in 2,190,0001 in 1,030,0001 in 808,000
ventru1 in 2,200,0001 in 1,550,0001 in 1,010,000
grisettes1 in 2,420,0001 in 2,730,0001 in 1,740,000
fadeur1 in 2,450,0001 in 1,330,0001 in 865,000
ramage1 in 2,520,0001 in 1,680,0001 in 1,160,000
lascar1 in 2,560,0001 in 5,810,0001 in 7,400,000
effilocher1 in 2,730,0001 in 3,070,0001 in 3,900,000
genièvre1 in 2,910,0001 in 3,420,0001 in 2,360,000
lutrin1 in 3,440,0001 in 3,600,0001 in 2,600,000
capharnaüm1 in 3,670,0001 in 26,600,0001 in 25,500,000
rabot1 in 3,770,0001 in 1,770,0001 in 2,070,000
papier de soie1 in 4,540,0001 in 6,740,0001 in 3,870,000
s’amorcer1 in 4,640,0001 in 3,180,0001 in 7,530,000
enchevêtré1 in 6,850,0001 in 6,780,0001 in 5,270,000
rapin1 in 7,260,0001 in 4,310,0001 in 2,510,000
lavallière1 in 12,500,0001 in 12,400,0001 in 13,000,000
empeigne1 in 14,500,0001 in 10,800,0001 in 7,260,000
émerillon1 in 17,300,0001 in 15,300,0001 in 14,600,000
varlope1 in 18,800,0001 in 15,300,0001 in 10,500,000
oxhydrique1 in 67,600,0001 in 36,200,0001 in 13,500,000
T.S.F1 in 97,800,0001 in 311,000,0001 in 104,000,000
gueuse-lambicNone1 in 8,600,000,0001 in 2,270,000,000

Word notes

  • lambic is a kind of beer that ferments spontaneously. gueuse-lambic is a mix of old and young lambics – two great tastes that go great together, apparently.
  • une empeigne is the leather upper of a shoe. Turns out there’s a whole lot of parts to a shoe, whose names I don’t know even in English.
  • un varlope and un rabot are two kinds of planing tools for woodworking. I had some trouble understanding from the definitions how they differed, and apparently it’s subtle. I stumbled upon Rabot ou varlope? , which you can consult for details.
  • une grisette is a condescending term for a low-class shop girl or other under-employed young woman who is generally considered sexually available. This character and characterization was fairly well established in French culture, art, and literature for a couple hundred years, including learned debates around what did and did not make one une grisette. Ick.
  • un camelot is a street merchant of cheap manufactured goods. According to Wiktionnaire, the etymology comes from the Arabic word for the animal – “camel”. This is the modern evolution of the itinerant desert trade. I don’t think there’s any connection with King Arthur’s castle. The name Camelot appears in medieval French romances, and there is a Roman ruin named Camuladonum which is thought to be the origin of that.
  • écheveler is to cause something to become disheveled. We need an English word for that. I guess the best we have is “rumple”, though I suppose you can use “dishevel” as an active verb.
  • sanguine is a reddish color, but also a sketch made with a crayon of that color.
A sanguine drawing

Common words, uncommon meanings

  • un bassin means a basin or cistern, but here it was used in the anatomical sense to refer to the collection of bones that make up the pelvis. The Bohemian youth keep a display skeleton around their attic hangout for who knows what reason.
  • une combinaison is a combination in the mathematical, or a coordinated outfit in fashion, but also means a scheme or an arrangement for accomplishing something vaguely shady.
  • la trame is the thread that goes back and forth on a loom – the “woof” in English. It is also used to mean a web of activity going on around someone/something. But in this novel it is used in describing someones clothing, so worn that you could see individual threads.

Vocab list: Pietr-le-Letton, Chapter 13

I’m making lists of unfamiliar words as I read George Simenon’s 1931 Pietr-le-Letton, the novel debut of the famous commissaire Maigret. Here’s my list for Chapter 13 (Les Deux Pietr) with links to definitions from Linguee and word frequencies from Google Books NGram Viewer.

This chapter is full of dramatic action. First the cliffhanger of the last chapter resolves as Maigret witnesses the Jekyll-Hyde like transformation of the refined, strong Pietr-le-Letton into the crude, weak Fédor Yourovitch. They talk a bit and are briefly interrupted by Le Letton’s wealthy criminal sponsor Mortimer. After he leaves, Maigret realizes that Letton qua Fédor’s mistress Anna is plotting to kill Mortimer from jealousy (recall the revolver in last chapter’s title – Anna wants Fédor to spend more time with her, less time criming). Maigret goes after him, but is too late to prevent the murder. He arrests Anna, but Pietr/Fédor escapes in the confusion.

The chapter spans 6 pages and contained 20 unfamiliar words. The words are mostly about emotional turmoil expressed in the face and body, physical struggle, and garments.

expression (root)Frequency in 2010Frequency in 1970Frequency in 1930
surcroît1 in 66,3001 in 125,0001 in 159,000
pan1 in 91,6001 in 133,0001 in 123,000
refouler1 in 109,0001 in 145,0001 in 113,000
pourpre1 in 236,0001 in 191,0001 in 129,000
houle1 in 472,0001 in 340,0001 in 373,000
galon1 in 581,0001 in 543,0001 in 445,000
saupoudré1 in 723,0001 in 1,320,0001 in 818,000
blafard1 in 777,0001 in 967,0001 in 856,000
exsangue1 in 794,0001 in 1,330,0001 in 1,600,000
affaissé1 in 1,210,0001 in 1,040,0001 in 676,000
trépigner1 in 1,220,0001 in 1,750,0001 in 1,620,000
pitre1 in 2,000,0001 in 1,630,0001 in 1,140,000
érailler1 in 2,050,0001 in 4,090,0001 in 3,200,000
pelisse1 in 2,170,0001 in 1,680,0001 in 1,070,000
écoeurant1 in 4,620,0001 in 12,500,0001 in 23,300,000
bonasse1 in 7,060,0001 in 4,710,0001 in 4,530,000
dépoitraillée1 in 20,600,0001 in 22,000,0001 in 18,900,000

Word notes

  • dépoitraillée means “bare-chested” from poitrine. Not only is it the word in this chapter with the lowest modern frequency (and nearly the lowest contemporaneous frequency in the whole book), the word doesn’t show up in Google Books corpus before 1855. Probably a neologism at that point. “A bodice ripper” is a dismissive English description of a sexully explicit romance novel. Maigret isn’t steamy stuff, but Anna’s bodice is indeed ripped as she struggles during her arrest.
  • bonasse is excessively kind. Some translations make it “goody two-shoes”, “meek”, or “naïve”. Simenon uses it to describe Cain in the biblical story of the two brothers.
  • écoeurant is “nauseating” or “revolting”. We saw its infinitive écoeurer back in Chapter 8, so I would normally omit this entry. But a reader pointed out to me that in modern Québecois, this word is generally used to have a positive meaning. This happens in English too: “That fastball was nasty. That was a filthy pitch” or “This cake is wicked.” They shared this helpful video lesson on the Québecois écoeurant with me as well.
  • érailler is “to rub”, “to fray”, “to wear”, “to scuff”, etc. It’s another one of these words that is far more frequent in its past-participle used as an adjective (like crispé and saccadé from last chapter). While normally it means “worn” or “frayed”, it translates better as “hoarse” when describing a voice, which is how Simenon uses it here (une voix trop éraillé). One dictionary translates voix éraillé as “whiskey voice”, which is not an English expression familiar to me.
  • trépigner literally means “to stamp one’s foot with emotion”, but is mostly used metaphorically. A common expression is «trépignent d’impatience», “bursting with impatience”: Vous trépignez d’impatience d’évoluer? It maps to the English animal-based metaphors “chomping at the bit” and “raring to go”. But also somewhat “milling around”: Simenon wrote «les femmes criaient par surcroît, pleuraient ou trépignaient» in describing a scene of hotel guests in the corridor after a the police arrive to investigate a murderous gunshot.
  • blafard and exsangue are near synonyms, both meaning “pale” or “sallow”. Exsangue literally means “without blood” or “with the blood removed”. Curiously, livide also means “pale”, with the connotation of being the result of sickness or strong emotion. In English “livid” is more often heard as a description of extreme anger or rage (“He was livid when he learned his son had gambled away the money.”). But in English the color associated with this word is a dark, gray, bluish, purple (“a livid bruise”). From what I can tell, livide is primarily associated with white in French, but does have a secondary meaning of blue-ish.
  • houle is an ocean swell or a wave. Simenon uses it in the poetic phrase «visage … blafard avec … des yeux couleur de houle». I like that houle is not really a color – it’s the ocean that is colored blue or green or gray – but by using that word the suggestion is that the person is experiencing a forceful swell of emotion, which is covered by the pallor of the rest of the face. Also, the word reminds by of hublot (porthole), though I don’t think the etymologies are connected.

Common words, uncommon meanings

  • pan is a very flexible word. Un pan can mean “a section”, “a panel”, “a flap”, “a facet”, “a part”, “a face (of a mountain)”, “a branch (of a subject)”, “a segment (of a population)”, or “a framing member (in construction)”. Most of these meanings are actually common, but there are so many of them I thought it noteworthy. In this chapter Simenon uses it to describe «un pan de la pelisse», “a flap of the cloak”.
  • pourpre is simply “purple”, and is mostly on this list because Simenon used it as a contrast with exsangue and blafard. I was confused, so I added it to research later. But it’s true that out of context, I was not 100% confident that this was just “purple” and not some idiomatic expression..

Vocab list: Pietr-le-Letton, Chapter 12

I’m making lists of unfamiliar words as I read George Simenon’s 1931 Pietr-le-Letton, the novel debut of the famous commissaire Maigret. Here’s my list for Chapter 12 (La Juive au Revolver) with links to definitions from Linguee and word frequencies from Google Books NGram Viewer.

In this chapter, Maigret gets a report from an underling about Le Letton’s mistress dining with a gun in her purse, broods about being an underappreciated cop, follows Le Letton around town some more, confronts him in his hotel room, and engineers a bluff to convince him he’s been thwarted. This triggers a sudden personality change in Le Letton (aided by several gulps of whiskey), but then the chapter ends (I wonder how you say “cliffhanger” in French?).

The chapter spans 8 pages and contained 22 unfamiliar words, including a few fairly common ones I’m glad to learn. The words are mostly about pursuing, hurrying, and being in pain.

expression (root)Frequency in 2010Frequency in 1970Frequency in 1930
démarche1 in 12,6001 in 30,3001 in 39,300
jurer1 in 41,1001 in 37,5001 in 33,900
nerf1 in 67,6001 in 66,9001 in 34,200
envergure1 in 121,0001 in 162,0001 in 188,000
brusqué1 in 122,0001 in 77,7001 in 44,500
acharner1 in 170,0001 in 153,0001 in 136,000
crispé1 in 172,0001 in 348,0001 in 356,000
péripéties1 in 199,0001 in 204,0001 in 202,000
empressait1 in 310,0001 in 226,0001 in 165,000
voûté1 in 311,0001 in 272,0001 in 242,000
tressaillir1 in 313,0001 in 374,0001 in 249,000
grès1 in 315,0001 in 68,0001 in 54,100
verrou1 in 350,0001 in 498,0001 in 472,000
frêle1 in 351,0001 in 371,0001 in 287,000
saccadé1 in 426,0001 in 554,0001 in 465,000
crouler1 in 749,0001 in 647,0001 in 488,000
guéridon1 in 1,070,0001 in 1,100,0001 in 906,000
envenimer1 in 1,070,0001 in 955,0001 in 854,000
dard1 in 1,260,0001 in 952,0001 in 808,000
inusité1 in 1,300,0001 in 758,0001 in 591,000
califourchon1 in 1,580,0001 in 2,480,0001 in 2,400,000
porte-tambour1 in 69,000,0001 in 159,000,0001 in 363,000,000

Word notes

  • péripéties is “adventures”. I learned the related word périple (“journey”) to describe a car trip I took last January from Paris to Marseille by way of several cities along the western and southern edges of France.
  • envergure is “scale” or “magnitude”. It can be used whether the value is small or large, but is more common with large. Maigret chases des malfaiteurs d’envergure.
  • crispé (“tense” or “uptight”) and saccadé (“jerky”) are past participles that occur as adjectives far more than as verbs. Crisper and saccader do exist, though.
  • verrou is “a lock”, “a latch”, or “a bolt”. But the expression sous les verrous is used for jailed persons, akin to “under lock and key” or “behind bars”.
  • envenimer means “to poison” or “to aggravate”. But reflexively, s’envenimer means “to fester”.
  • inusité means “unusual”. It was less unusual to see it in 1930.
  • califourchon is “straddling”, to describe a way of sitting on a saddle or on a chair. But acces à califourchon means “piggybacking” or “tailgating”, meaning a second person sneaking in without payment or authorization behind a legitimate entrant.
  • porte-tambour is a revolving door, or literally a “drum door”. The door itself was invented in 1888 for use in skyscrapers. The French name for it underwent a mild shift over time. Even in 1930, it was more common to write porte à tambour; dropping the hyphen was less common. But around 2000 the gap between these formulations became far sharper (see graph), and now porte à tambour seems standard. Note the stated frequency of 1 in 69 million is not comparable the other words in this list because it concerns a multi-word phrase; NGram Viewer handles phrases differently from single words.

Common words, uncommon meanings

  • jurer typically means “to swear” or “to curse”, which I knew. But in the expression jurer dans it means “to clash with”: C’était un sac de voyage vulgaire, qui valait tout au plus une centaine de francs et qui jurait dans ce décor.
  • une démarche usually means an “action” or an “undertaking”, but it can also mean “gait”, i.e. the way someone walks. The word is quite common, but wasn’t familiar to me in any of its meanings.

Vocab list: Pietr-le-Letton, Chapter 11

I’m making lists of unfamiliar words as I read George Simenon’s 1931 Pietr-le-Letton, the novel debut of the famous commissaire Maigret. Here’s my list for Chapter 11 (La Journée des Allées et Venues) with links to definitions from Linguee and word frequencies from Google Books NGram Viewer.

In this chapter, Maigret first rails internally against the aloof, polished, Nordic, hyper-intellectual Letton qua Oppenheim, then openly follows him about town a bit. As they approach a bar, he witnesses a remarkable transformation: Oppenheim slips away and is replaced by the rough, ignorant slav Fédor Yourovitch. It dawns on Maigret that these are not simple aliases or disguises, but actual personality shifts that Letton can little control. Eventually, Letton manages to return to his Oppenheim persona, with a crushed whiskey glass and a cut hand in the picture. There’s something blatantly Jekyll and Hyde about the whole thing, with a none too charitable treatment of dissociative personality disorder.

All in all there are 8 pages, 23 unfamiliar words. Mostly about transformations, internal and external features, coming undone, bars, and smells:

expression (root)Frequency in 2010Frequency in 1970Frequency in 1930
racé1 in 30,8001 in 24,5001 in 13,400
briller1 in 37,7001 in 38,5001 in 31,200
abattre1 in 52,4001 in 46,6001 in 51,300
brouiller1 in 83,3001 in 126,0001 in 121,000
trempe1 in 102,0001 in 91,9001 in 80,500
étreindre1 in 105,0001 in 174,0001 in 139,000
coupure1 in 107,0001 in 103,0001 in 138,000
rôder1 in 217,0001 in 276,0001 in 256,000
broyer1 in 250,0001 in 210,0001 in 172,000
écailler1 in 254,0001 in 126,0001 in 99,900
travestir1 in 294,0001 in 384,0001 in 495,000
rebords1 in 302,0001 in 213,0001 in 199,000
truchement1 in 306,0001 in 338,0001 in 1,110,000
renifler1 in 403,0001 in 977,0001 in 1,500,000
décousu1 in 427,0001 in 686,0001 in 707,000
désinvolture1 in 436,0001 in 501,0001 in 632,000
humer1 in 452,0001 in 642,0001 in 607,000
forcené1 in 493,0001 in 530,0001 in 535,000
relent1 in 547,0001 in 934,0001 in 1,350,000
disséquer1 in 583,0001 in 486,0001 in 452,000
exigu1 in 595,0001 in 675,0001 in 685,000
grime1 in 2,230,0001 in 3,960,0001 in 3,110,000
encaisseur1 in 17,500,0001 in 7,940,0001 in 5,940,000

Word notes

  • exigu is my favorite of this bunch. It means “cramped” or “small”. It is not “cozy” or anything positive. I like the word because it fits three syllables into the tight space of just five letters, somehow embodying its own meaning.
  • décousu is the past participle of découdre, which is the opposite of coudre = “to sew”. Décousu is translated as “disjointed” or “rambling”, but literally means something more like “unhitched” or “unraveled”, maybe “frayed”.
  • désinvolture (“casualness”) is the noun form of the word désinvolte (“casual”) we saw in Chapter 10.
  • racé meaning “distinguished” is not really all that common. Google NGram Viewer is conflating with with race meaning race.

Common words, uncommon meanings

  • une coupure de cinq francs: the word coupure just means “a cut”, but here it is used to mean a denomination of currency. Could just as well have used un billet. My research found this sense of coupure being used these days more often in technical monetary discussions.
  • par le truchement de: the word truchement means “intermediary”. But this entire phrase is universally translated as “through”. For example, Les organisations ne peuvent agir que par le truchement de leurs employés ou de leurs agents. = “Corporations can only act through their employees and agents.” But note what happened – the entire prepositional phrase in French gets reduced to just the preposition in English. You see this again and again in the sample of occurrences of truchment on Linguee. I find this remarkable; I don’t know other examples where a noun (as opposed to an interjection or an adverb) is universally dropped in the translation from French to English.
  • un encaisseur de la Compagnie du gaz. By itself, the word encaisseur means “a collector” or “a cashier”. But here, it’s used to describe another patron sitting at the bar. How does Maigret know that’s his job? Was he actively working there? Did folks pay their gas bills not at the office, but at a bar? Fun to spin imaginative tales of how the 1930’s worked. As the word is now one in 17 million, it’s easy to dream up a way of life that has now vanished.
  • fer à cheval is literally “iron on a horse” but more properly horseshoe. Here it’s used in the phrase le bar à fer en cheval = “a horseshoe shaped bar”.
  • grime = “dirt” or “grime”. But by far the most common usage of this word is in the form se grime = “to paint one’s face” or “to make up”. Simenon uses it in the discussion of cops disguising themselves when undercover, while Pietr-le-Letton actually became these persona on the inside. The phrase also appears in the title of a famous print by Georges Rouault created in 1923, “Qui ne se grime pas?”.
This verb form, “se grime”, is by far more common than any other word preceding “grime”.
“Qui ne se grime pas?” a print by Georges Rouault created in 1923.
  • abattre ses cartes = “lay one’s cards on the table”. Abattre is “to slaughter”, and abattu can mean “killed”, or “felled” / “hewn” / “cut down”. More metaphorically, it can mean “depressed” or “down”. An abat-jour is a lampshade – it kills the daylight. So abattre ses cartes is to let the cards fall from your hand face up, revealing what was hidden. And of course un abattoir is “a slaughterhouse”, like this one I photographed 2018 in Roye, France, just casually plunked down a quarter mile from the old center of town:

I’m oddly curious about these cars parked outside the slaughterhouse. Were they there to purchase meat? Do they work there? Did they bring with them chickens, or very cooperative pigs to be butchered? Seems too grim for the cheerful shade of yellow paint.

Vocab list: Pietr-le-Letton, Chapter 10

I’m making lists of unfamiliar words as I read George Simenon’s 1931 Pietr-le-Letton, the novel debut of the famous commissaire Maigret. Here’s my list for Chapter 10 (Le Retour d’Oswald Oppenheim) with links to definitions and word frequencies from Google Books NGram Viewer.

In this chapter there’s not much action, more internal brooding and some reveals. Maigret mourns at his desk, goes back to the tenement on rue du Roi-de-Sicile to confront the woman he interviewed there before, then returns to the hotel to fume as he sits in the lobby. He envisions the body of his dead colleague being taken out of the hotel on a stretcher through the service corridors. He pieces together the fact that his quarry, the villain Pietr-le-Letton, is the same man who plays the role of the elegant Oswald Oppenheim, and also the same man passing as Fédor Yourovitch, the immigrant husband of tenement woman. The chapter ends with him realizing he has no proof of all this as he watches Letton qua Oppenheim enter the hotel lobby resplendent in his finery.

A short-ish chapter, just 16 unfamiliar words. About half of them are interior decorating words as Maigret spends most of these pages sitting in and thinking about the hotel:

expression (root)Frequency in 2010Frequency in 1970Frequency in 1930
remuer1 in 99,6001 in 95,9001 in 73,800
cogner1 in 209,0001 in 397,0001 in 530,000
mat1 in 260,0001 in 210,0001 in 176,000
chapelet1 in 320,0001 in 337,0001 in 248,000
malle1 in 357,0001 in 372,0001 in 264,000
désemparé1 in 374,0001 in 595,0001 in 593,000
haleter1 in 484,0001 in 597,0001 in 537,000
désinvolte1 in 540,0001 in 880,0001 in 1,660,000
osier1 in 647,0001 in 766,0001 in 585,000
clairsemé1 in 988,0001 in 699,0001 in 459,000
vasque1 in 1,100,0001 in 999,0001 in 873,000
civière1 in 1,240,0001 in 1,760,0001 in 1,820,000
limoger1 in 1,430,0001 in 2,880,0001 in 10,700,000
rotin1 in 1,780,0001 in 1,720,0001 in 1,890,000
colimaçon1 in 1,870,0001 in 3,080,0001 in 3,520,000
râblé1 in 4,730,0001 in 6,050,0001 in 5,300,000

A few thoughts I had while looking up these words:

  • limoger means “to fire someone” or “to sack”. This word was virtually unheard of in 1900, and has had a steady rise since, peeking right around 2000. Simenon seems to have caught this wave as it was building.
  • râblé is typically translated as “stocky”. Both words are used almost exclusively in descriptions of people or animals, and it’s not obvious what other words in the language they are related to. Both words were nearly unused in their language before 1800. The word râble (without the accent over the final e ) means “back” or “saddle”, and occurs most often as describing an edible part of a rabbit: râble de lapin, râble de lièvre. Sounds tasty, from the recipe descriptions.
  • colimaçon is a spiral staircase. Good word, that. The architectural feature has been around since about 150 A.D., and the word colimaçon came into broad use around 1760 and held remarkably steady for 240 years. Since 2000, though, it’s usage has shot up inexplicably. I wonder what spiral staircases everyone is talking about suddenly?
  • osier and rotin both describe chairs. osier is “wicker” while rotin is “rattan”. I realized I didn’t know what the difference between these was in English, so I looked it up. Apparently “wicker” is the woven construction method while “rattan” is the fibrous vine that is used as material for weaving. Not sure why Simenon used both in the same chapter. Most people use them interchangeably in English, and apparently in French too, with osier being about three times more popular a word choice:
  • mat is more commonly used as a noun, a synonym for tapis or carpet (i.e. a mat). But here Simenon uses it to describe the sound of somebody spitting down a stairwell at Maigret: “La salive tomba avec un bruit mat …”. The dictionary says “flat” is the translation of this use of mat (like a matte finish of a painted wall or a photograph), but if I were translating this I would not say “with a flat noise” I would write “The saliva fell with a splat …”
  • clairsemé means “sparse”. Another good word to know. Simenon uses it in this short sentence describing the hotel lobby late at night: “Des domestiques clairsemés circulaient.” In my professional life, I often work with matrices: two-dimensional grids of numbers used to represent all sort of things. Calculations with matrices are a lot easier of most of the numbers in them are 0, and there’s a special name for these: “sparse matrices”. Alas, the accepted French term for “sparse matrix” seems to be matrice creuse, and not matrice clairsemé, though you will find this phrase in bad translations.

Onward to Chapter 11 !

Vocab list: Pietr-le-Letton, Chapter 9

I’m making lists of unfamiliar words as I read George Simenon’s 1931 Pietr-le-Letton, the novel debut of the famous commissaire Maigret. Here’s my list for Chapter 9 (Le Tueur) with links to definitions and word frequencies from Google Books NGram Viewer.

In this chapter, Maigret goes hunting for the shooter who winged him in Chapter 7. Maigret doesn’t find the shooter, but does identify the spotter who pointed out Maigret as the target. He visits the spotters apartement, finds it empty, searches it.

My list of unfamiliar words in this chapter is pretty short. Mostly about the random stuff Maigret finds in the ratty apartment of a vaguely unsavory male nightclub dancer:

expression (root)Frequency in 2010Frequency in 1970Frequency in 1930
instar1 in 50,4001 in 222,0001 in 315,000
mondain1 in 103,0001 in 124,0001 in 107,000
broncher1 in 329,0001 in 365,0001 in 235,000
comparse1 in 794,0001 in 970,0001 in 953,000
délester1 in 843,0001 in 2,530,0001 in 3,660,000
escarpin1 in 1,110,0001 in 3,870,0001 in 3,550,000
rapiécer1 in 1,960,0001 in 2,670,0001 in 2,440,000
perdreau1 in 2,840,0001 in 2,430,0001 in 1,580,000
frusques1 in 7,120,0001 in 9,390,0001 in 11,300,000
reps1 in 19,800,0001 in 9,740,0001 in 7,090,000
véronal1 in 45,400,0001 in 5,070,0001 in 3,730,000

A few thoughts I had while looking up these words:

  • reps here means a coarse weave in fabric, usually for upholstery. Also used to describe wire mesh.
  • rapiécer (“to patch up”) uses the prefix ra- to mean “again”. This is also the case in an earlier word from this novel, raviser. I hadn’t known this existed, as opposed to the more common re- prefix. I wonder if there’s a pattern of when each one is used. 
  • comparse means “sidekick”, “accomplice”, or “buddy”, but with a less-than-savory connotation. In researching its usage I’ve sometimes seen it translated as “stooge”, which I really liked and fit the situation perfectly: l’Union européenne ne parvenait à prendre une initiative et à jouer un rôle autre que de comparse des États-Unis, évidemment.
  • The rarest word, véronal, is a sedative drug. Indeed, it was the first commercially available barbiturate, invented in 1903 by a German chemist working in Verona, Italy, and marketed under the name Véronale. The drug became common enough that the brand name turned into a common word. Its frequency in the Google Books corpus jumped when it was invented, grew during the 1930s, peeked around 1938, had a brief resurgence in the 1950s, then faded to near nothingness by 1985 or so. I bet commercial sales followed a similar pattern
The lifecycle of a commercial drug? Véronale came and went.
  • The word délester means “to offload”, “to relieve congestion”, or “to outsource”. It’s had a steady growth over 100 years. Simenon was reaching for an obscure, one-in-3.6 million word when he penned it. Now the word is more common jargon:
Pretty soon all French jobs will be outsourced…
  • The word instar is used almost exclusively in the phrase à l’instar de qqch, an expression that draws a similarity between two things or situations. I had not known this expression, but it’s fairly common today at 1-in-50,000 words. Here are some recent examples from Linguée:
    • Ici, à l’instar d’autres aspects des soins de santé, les gouvernements canadiens ont adopté deux stratégies.
    • À l’instar des années précédentes, la fourniture des statistiques s’est déroulée normalement en 2003.
    • À l’instar de plusieurs artistes de l’époque, il doit travailler fort et même se battre pour imposer ses idées nouvelles.
Est-ce que tout le monde veut être à l’instar de la majorité?

When Simenon used the phrase in 1931, it was leading a boring life, with a stable frequency over decades. Something happened in 1970 that launched this expression on a steady upward trajectory that took 40 years to peak in the 2000s, but had been pretty steadily declining since then. Did “group think” become a thing starting in 1970, and everybody had to showcase how their situations / actions / outcomes were universal? In the words of songwriter Jim Infantino, “Everybody’s trying not to be just like everybody, and I don’t want to be like that.”