Dragoman

dragoman

PRONUNCIATION:

(DRAG-uh-man) 

MEANING:

noun: An interpreter or guide.

ETYMOLOGY:

From French dragoman, from Italian dragomanno, from Latin/Greek dragoumanos, from Arabic tarjuman, and Aramaic, from Akkadian targumanu (interpreter). Earliest documented use: 1300s. Akkadian is a now-extinct Semitic language once spoken in ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and written in cuneiform. Earliest documented use: 14th century.

USAGE:

"The pig doesn't express himself in some exotic swine-dialect, the farmer has no need to summon a dragoman fluent in grunts, each understands the other perfectly."
Eric Ormsby; Ambitious Diminutives; Parnassus: Poetry in Review; 2008.

See more usage examples of dragoman in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

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