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 8 (Maigret Ne Joue Plus) with links to definitions and word frequencies from Google Books NGram Viewer (warning: today’s frequency counts are wonky).
In this chapter, Maigret has been shot! Actually, that happened at the end of chapter 7, but I was unclear on the fact; all I had gleaned was that someone was shot in the final sentence of chapter 7, I hadn’t realized it was Maigret. In Chapter 8 he first spends a while stumbling around bleeding, then he makes his way back to the hotel where his officers were staking out the criminals, only to find one of them murdered via chloroform and a long needle to the heart. Finally, he calls in his Chief of Police, cleans himself up, and heads into the field once more to find the bad guys, ‘cuz now it’s personal!
Today’s list is largely words about wounds, bandages, nausea, blood stains, swelling, and lassitude. You know, everyday vocabulary.
| expression (root) | Frequency in 2010 | Frequency in 1970 | Frequency in 1930 |
|---|---|---|---|
| fouler | 1 in 20,400 | 1 in 21,200 | 1 in 17,800 |
| allure | 1 in 47,600 | 1 in 45,800 | 1 in 33,100 |
| ballant | 1 in 50,200 | 1 in 66,400 | 1 in 61,300 |
| desservir | 1 in 74,600 | 1 in 85,900 | 1 in 71,800 |
| plaie | 1 in 94,500 | 1 in 109,000 | 1 in 67,300 |
| caler | 1 in 143,000 | 1 in 190,000 | 1 in 161,000 |
| gisait | 1 in 156,000 | 1 in 194,000 | 1 in 172,000 |
| frôler | 1 in 183,000 | 1 in 351,000 | 1 in 391,000 |
| béant | 1 in 226,000 | 1 in 352,000 | 1 in 317,000 |
| dénicher | 1 in 278,000 | 1 in 1,050,000 | 1 in 1,070,000 |
| pansement | 1 in 347,000 | 1 in 567,000 | 1 in 260,000 |
| netteté | 1 in 361,000 | 1 in 157,000 | 1 in 100,000 |
| recroquevillé | 1 in 404,000 | 1 in 1,110,000 | 1 in 1,610,000 |
| happer | 1 in 420,000 | 1 in 787,000 | 1 in 811,000 |
| souillure | 1 in 423,000 | 1 in 501,000 | 1 in 460,000 |
| ahurissant | 1 in 445,000 | 1 in 596,000 | 1 in 576,000 |
| raviser | 1 in 531,000 | 1 in 1,130,000 | 1 in 1,010,000 |
| poindre | 1 in 628,000 | 1 in 814,000 | 1 in 729,000 |
| bourrelet | 1 in 978,000 | 1 in 259,000 | 1 in 186,000 |
| omoplate | 1 in 1,080,000 | 1 in 1,350,000 | 1 in 653,000 |
| bougonner | 1 in 1,130,000 | 1 in 2,310,000 | 1 in 2,450,000 |
| divaguer | 1 in 1,140,000 | 1 in 1,680,000 | 1 in 1,640,000 |
| boursouflé | 1 in 1,430,000 | 1 in 1,560,000 | 1 in 1,350,000 |
| tuméfier | 1 in 1,740,000 | 1 in 2,810,000 | 1 in 981,000 |
| hébétude | 1 in 2,130,000 | 1 in 3,010,000 | 1 in 3,610,000 |
| tournemain | 1 in 4,290,000 | 1 in 5,130,000 | 1 in 4,040,000 |
| écoeurer | 1 in 5,780,000 | 1 in 16,500,000 | 1 in 35,900,000 |
| écoeurement | 1 in 25,800,000 | 1 in 50,200,000 | 1 in 110,000,000 |
A few notable things today:
- The word gisait means “was lying”, as in a dead body sprawled out on the floor. It’s commonly used for bodies, dead or alive, lying on surfaces. But the interesting thing is the infinitive is gésir, but all the conjugations start with gis-. Apparently it is also used only in restricted tenses: présent indicative, imparfait indicative, and present participle. I’ve never encountered this pattern before.
- The word une plaie means a wound. The frequency of this words usage in books is fascinating:
- That spike around 1916? That’s the First World War. I don’t know why there isn’t a similar spike during World War II. All the wounded soldiers died, so the wounds weren’t worth writing about? A different word was adopted to describe these wounds? Nobody had time to write about it? Or maybe these books are just not in Google’s data for some reason.
- The word écoeurement (disgust, nausea) is the rarest on this list — a whopping 1 in 26 million these days. But it’s not that hard to find on the Web, so I wonder if it’s just not a bookish word? Note that the word is having a resurgence. When Simenon selected it, the word has a prevalence in print of just 1 in 110 million !
- Google NGram Viewer released a new corpus this week, with data running all the way up to 2019. So I shifted my window to look at the years 1930, 1970, and 2010. Recall the book was written in 1931, so the 1930 data is the environment Simenon was writing in.
- That said, the frequencies are not entirely trustworthy at the moment. I think the new release does very aggressive pooling. So for example, ballant (dangling) is broken by its conflation with balle (a ball). I’m sure the “dangling” meaning is more rare than 1 in 50,000 words. I’ll work to get these cleaned up before long, but meanwhile I don’t trust the frequencies more common than 1 in 100,000