Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An interpreter or guide in countries where Arabic, Turkish, or Persian is spoken.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An interpreter specifically- An interpreter and guide or agent for travelers.
- n. An interpreter attached to an embassy or a consulate. The term is in general use among travelers in the Levant and other parts of the East.
Wiktionary
- n. An interpreter, especially for the Arabic and Turkish languages.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An interpreter; -- so called in the Levant and other parts of the East.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an interpreter and guide in the Near East; in the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries a translator of European languages for the Turkish and Arab authorities and most dragomans were Greek (many reached high positions in the government)
Etymologies
- From Middle English dragman, from Old French drugeman, from Medieval Latin dragumannus, from Medieval Greek δραγομάνος, from Arabic ترجمان (turgumán, "translator, interpreter"). Compare truchman. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English dragman, from Old French drugeman, from Medieval Latin dragumannus, from Medieval Greek dragoumanos, from Arabic tarjumān, from Aramaic targəmānā, from Akkadian targumannu, interpreter; see rgm in Semitic roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“When his memory failed him he called his dragoman and began an Arabic lesson.”
“The 'dragoman' establishments are much more attached to old ideas than Turks and”
“She was not very nervous about this, but she immediately called the dragoman, Mahomet, who knew the use of a gun, and she asked him if he would stand by her in case they were attacked in my absence; the faithful servant replied, "Mahomet fight the”
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 3
“[Footnote 327: Or interpreter, now commonly called dragoman, druggeman, or trucheman, all of which are corruptions from the Arabic”
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 08
“Winston wins Aneth, but the person who makes everything work out in the end is Tadros the dragoman.”
“Tadros, a dragoman, whom we first see smoking a cigarette and twirling his moustache.”
“Lady Duff Gordon settles in Luxor, in a small household consisting of Sally and the resourceful Egyptian dragoman they found they needed to deal with the intricacies of a different culture.”
““Miss Naldrett tells me she can make you better, Sitti,” says our dragoman.”
“We saw the great medieval mosque, Ibn Tulun, where we watched our dragoman remove his shoes, wash his feet, and kneel down to pray, and Khan el-Khalili, the enormous bazaar, where my Lady was treated like a visiting dignitary.”
“She nodded and waved her hand to show she trusted her dragoman to make his own decisions regarding his faith, and that she was not to be swayed by reminders of me.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘dragoman’.
-
Additional 250 Spelling Words
Words for the diehard intermediate and advanced spellers
facetiae, sagittary, anthophilous, hydromancy, pandect, carillonneur, tabbouleh, litterateur, windgall, pinguid, tressure, moderne and 238 more...
-
Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 more...
-
phrontistery - d
from phrontistery.info
dysteleology, dyslogistic, dystectic, dysphoria, dysphonia, dystopia, dysphemism, dystocia, dyslogia, dysaesthesia, dyschromatopic, dysbulia and 624 more...
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
-
July
vapulate, cattywampus, oneiric, petrichor, dithyramb, lea, dreadnaught, haruspex, caryatid, stentorian, cynosure, lunula and 22 more...
-
stuff i like to say
transpire, slipperiness, tobogganing, carbuncle, valetudinarianism, anschauung, espadrille, dragoman, tessellated, eyeballs, earlobe, graith and 3 more...
-
Not quite love
prolix, pleonastic, senescence, autochthonous, loup, pronk, onomatopoeia, magisterial, rixatrix, esurient, blowsabella, crapulence and 69 more...
-
Papageno's Words, Pt. II
cicurate, circumforaneous, codger, comiconomenclaturist, constable, contradistinction, contraindicated, counterpane, coxcomb, decalcomania, decanal, decoction and 307 more...
-
The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
-
colleen's words
yellow, green, pie, blue, fur, people, incense, book, brown, avuncular, mountain, fog and 1316 more...
-
liminal words
transformational, entryway words: thresh(hold), fresh relief
liminal, sill, threshold, aletheia, inscape, adit, introit, maze, pore, porism, portal, port and 114 more...
-
The Innocents Abroad
Words rounded up while reading The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.
rakish, excursionist, bowelless, pilgrimizing, melodeon, woebegone, abaft, sextant, veriest, behindhand, stanchion, avast and 188 more...
-
bertilak's Words
antidisestablishm..., feldercarb, wainscoting, eleemosynary, oxymoron, fuliginous, libration, lammergeier, saxifrage, ichor, lambent, smaragdine and 414 more...
-
looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
-
Delta
D
devolve, defenestrate, defenestration, didactic, dragoman, distaff, donga, dagmar, dickensian, diacritic, démarche, dreg and 26 more...
-
translation
translationese, dragoman, literal translation, word-for-word tra..., simultaneous tran..., targum, chuchotage, transliteration, sound translation, paraphrase, paraphrast, interlanguage
Tweets
Looking for tweets for dragoman.
knitandpurl "For all his sentimentality about gentlemanly chivalry, Lord doesn't shy away from what the sinking and its aftermath revealed about the era's privileges and prejudices. "Even the passengers' dogs were glamorous," begins a tongue-in-cheek catalogue in "A Night to Remember" that includes a Pekingese named Sun Yatsen—part of the entourage of Henry Harper, of the publishing family, who, Lord laconically reports, had also picked up an Egyptian dragoman during his preëmbarkation travels, "as a sort of joke.""
- "Unsinkable" by Daniel Mendelsohn, p 68 of the April 16, 2012 issue of the New Yorker Apr 17, 2012
chained_bear "Sciahan spoke through a Modlavian dragoman, telling Jack about the Syrian campaign in 1799..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission, 325 Feb 14, 2008