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 2010 | Frequency in 1970 | Frequency in 1930 |
|---|---|---|---|
| racé | 1 in 30,800 | 1 in 24,500 | 1 in 13,400 |
| briller | 1 in 37,700 | 1 in 38,500 | 1 in 31,200 |
| abattre | 1 in 52,400 | 1 in 46,600 | 1 in 51,300 |
| brouiller | 1 in 83,300 | 1 in 126,000 | 1 in 121,000 |
| trempe | 1 in 102,000 | 1 in 91,900 | 1 in 80,500 |
| étreindre | 1 in 105,000 | 1 in 174,000 | 1 in 139,000 |
| coupure | 1 in 107,000 | 1 in 103,000 | 1 in 138,000 |
| rôder | 1 in 217,000 | 1 in 276,000 | 1 in 256,000 |
| broyer | 1 in 250,000 | 1 in 210,000 | 1 in 172,000 |
| écailler | 1 in 254,000 | 1 in 126,000 | 1 in 99,900 |
| travestir | 1 in 294,000 | 1 in 384,000 | 1 in 495,000 |
| rebords | 1 in 302,000 | 1 in 213,000 | 1 in 199,000 |
| truchement | 1 in 306,000 | 1 in 338,000 | 1 in 1,110,000 |
| renifler | 1 in 403,000 | 1 in 977,000 | 1 in 1,500,000 |
| décousu | 1 in 427,000 | 1 in 686,000 | 1 in 707,000 |
| désinvolture | 1 in 436,000 | 1 in 501,000 | 1 in 632,000 |
| humer | 1 in 452,000 | 1 in 642,000 | 1 in 607,000 |
| forcené | 1 in 493,000 | 1 in 530,000 | 1 in 535,000 |
| relent | 1 in 547,000 | 1 in 934,000 | 1 in 1,350,000 |
| disséquer | 1 in 583,000 | 1 in 486,000 | 1 in 452,000 |
| exigu | 1 in 595,000 | 1 in 675,000 | 1 in 685,000 |
| grime | 1 in 2,230,000 | 1 in 3,960,000 | 1 in 3,110,000 |
| encaisseur | 1 in 17,500,000 | 1 in 7,940,000 | 1 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?”.
- 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.