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 2010 | Frequency in 1970 | Frequency in 1930 |
|---|---|---|---|
| machin | 1 in 19,000 | 1 in 12,500 | 1 in 16,100 |
| bergère | 1 in 85,000 | 1 in 88,300 | 1 in 82,400 |
| timbre | 1 in 116,000 | 1 in 67,400 | 1 in 29,900 |
| ronger | 1 in 142,000 | 1 in 171,000 | 1 in 148,000 |
| caserne | 1 in 177,000 | 1 in 181,000 | 1 in 171,000 |
| infime | 1 in 183,000 | 1 in 203,000 | 1 in 188,000 |
| cachet | 1 in 198,000 | 1 in 140,000 | 1 in 113,000 |
| velléité | 1 in 275,000 | 1 in 446,000 | 1 in 335,000 |
| sursis | 1 in 279,000 | 1 in 218,000 | 1 in 271,000 |
| apparat | 1 in 308,000 | 1 in 316,000 | 1 in 333,000 |
| fichu | 1 in 325,000 | 1 in 617,000 | 1 in 560,000 |
| tare | 1 in 327,000 | 1 in 253,000 | 1 in 149,000 |
| rafale | 1 in 332,000 | 1 in 388,000 | 1 in 554,000 |
| épave | 1 in 346,000 | 1 in 371,000 | 1 in 345,000 |
| piètre | 1 in 357,000 | 1 in 678,000 | 1 in 691,000 |
| râle | 1 in 358,000 | 1 in 450,000 | 1 in 339,000 |
| pignon | 1 in 398,000 | 1 in 386,000 | 1 in 233,000 |
| décousu | 1 in 427,000 | 1 in 686,000 | 1 in 707,000 |
| délabré | 1 in 516,000 | 1 in 683,000 | 1 in 650,000 |
| flairer | 1 in 544,000 | 1 in 450,000 | 1 in 386,000 |
| ployer | 1 in 634,000 | 1 in 470,000 | 1 in 342,000 |
| tamiser | 1 in 640,000 | 1 in 1,120,000 | 1 in 896,000 |
| fourvoyer | 1 in 732,000 | 1 in 1,090,000 | 1 in 1,190,000 |
| boutade | 1 in 745,000 | 1 in 523,000 | 1 in 442,000 |
| bigarré | 1 in 773,000 | 1 in 860,000 | 1 in 493,000 |
| démiurge | 1 in 805,000 | 1 in 1,110,000 | 1 in 2,180,000 |
| à son gré | 1 in 844,000 | 1 in 391,000 | 1 in 259,000 |
| hécatombe | 1 in 993,000 | 1 in 1,120,000 | 1 in 1,070,000 |
| tripoter | 1 in 954,000 | 1 in 1,880,000 | 1 in 2,990,000 |
| bousculade | 1 in 1,020,000 | 1 in 1,280,000 | 1 in 1,240,000 |
| persienne | 1 in 1,180,000 | 1 in 1,170,000 | 1 in 987,000 |
| fêlure | 1 in 1,220,000 | 1 in 2,170,000 | 1 in 2,610,000 |
| penderie | 1 in 1,430,000 | 1 in 3,580,000 | 1 in 9,600,000 |
| rabrouer | 1 in 1,460,000 | 1 in 2,740,000 | 1 in 2,540,000 |
| tintamarre | 1 in 1,750,000 | 1 in 2,110,000 | 1 in 2,340,000 |
| venelle | 1 in 1,990,000 | 1 in 3,630,000 | 1 in 3,790,000 |
| jambages | 1 in 2,350,000 | 1 in 1,710,000 | 1 in 1,370,000 |
| bourrade | 1 in 2,500,000 | 1 in 2,950,000 | 1 in 2,820,000 |
| dégringolade | 1 in 2,500,000 | 1 in 4,910,000 | 1 in 4,060,000 |
| mercerie | 1 in 2,510,000 | 1 in 949,000 | 1 in 1,750,000 |
| griserie | 1 in 2,590,000 | 1 in 1,850,000 | 1 in 1,380,000 |
| polichinelle | 1 in 2,960,000 | 1 in 4,040,000 | 1 in 2,880,000 |
| à brûle-pourpoint | 1 in 3,090,000 | 1 in 4,740,000 | 1 in 3,980,000 |
| roulier | 1 in 3,930,000 | 1 in 3,120,000 | 1 in 2,390,000 |
| veinard | 1 in 4,010,000 | 1 in 8,270,000 | 1 in 8,520,000 |
| cabotin | 1 in 4,030,000 | 1 in 2,900,000 | 1 in 2,320,000 |
| brouiller les cartes | 1 in 6,120,000 | 1 in 7,690,000 | 1 in 13,100,000 |
| bitte | 1 in 6,460,000 | 1 in 8,610,000 | 1 in 13,300,000 |
| se griser | 1 in 15,900,000 | 1 in 11,000,000 | 1 in 5,880,000 |
| haut-le-coeur | 1 in 74,800,000 | 1 in 132,000,000 | 1 in 193,000,000 |
| tache de son | 1 in 94,500,000 | 1 in 111,000,000 | 1 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.
Une rafale 
La Rafale
- 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 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 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