09 March 2016

"Pildomatist"

"Then she ran into the garden and took refuge on a bench, a prey to feelings that stirred her young heart for the first time.  Raoul followed her and they talked until evening, very shyly.  They were quite changed, were as cautious as two pildomatists and told each other things that had nothing to do with their budding sentiments."
--- Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, Chapter V.

This morning I encountered a mystery word.  I couldn't find "pildomatist" in my Random House Dictionary, or even in my OED.  More than that, there were no "pild..." words to which it might be related, both dictionaries leaping from "pilc..." to "pile."

The mystery deepened when a Google search turned up nothing except a few references to this same passage in The Phantom of the Opera.

Since the author was French, I found an online French dictionary, but it also had no pild... words.  One possible explanation was "if the word is spelled correctly, I'd guess that it had Latin origins
pil doma tist.  pil: to gather, to pillage, to plunder, to rob, to steal, to snatch, to heap up (as stones) and to carry off.  doma: home" (implying that a pildomatist is a house burglar, which would be consistent with the context).  But that didn't explain its absence from dictionaries.

Perhaps it's simply a typo that has been carried forward through various editions of the book (my copy was Dorset Press, 1985).  

Or an error by an early translator of the work.

Or a neologism by the author based on some slang used in 1911.

I'll turn this over to the unparalleled knowledge base of the readers of this blog, some of whom undoubtedly have obscure dictionaries and arcane knowledge of various languages.

Addendum:  We already have a presumptive correct answer in the Comments, but ponder the problem before peeking.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly questions/problems get solved here.

11 comments:

  1. I'm no direct help and if no one else has a clue on you blog, I'd suggest calling on http://www.waywordradio.org/

    ReplyDelete
  2. In other editions, it's "diplomatist"
    e.g. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/175/175-h/175-h.htm


    Going by Google Books, the typo does seem to have persisted across a surprising number of editions though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Diplomatist" isn't bad as a symbol of caution/discretion. I wonder if Leroux used the word in any of his other writing. I have his Mystery of the Yellow Room on my shelf and could reread that when I finish Phantom (not sure how to online search an author's corpus).

      Thanks, Kniffler.

      Delete
    2. Don't no either, but Google Ngram is still relevant: apparently, "diplomatists" was much more commong in Leroux's time.
      https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Gaston+Leroux%2Cdiplomatists&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CGaston%20Leroux%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdiplomatists%3B%2Cc0

      Delete
    3. Good idea, Sylvia. Thanks (looks like an N-gram of "diplomat" and "diplomatist" shows them crossing in about 1910).

      Delete
  3. I'd suggest the original typesetter didn't know his "diplomatist" from his "pildomatist", so when he chose the original d-i-p-l letters, he distractedly created the word of equal merit (to him), namely the p-i-l-d version. Generations of proof-readers should be squirming!

    ReplyDelete
  4. :-) uh-oh, i am going to learn something. :-) which is always very, very cool.

    I-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. would not the correct word be 'diplomats' instead of 'diplomatists'? which would make 'pildomatist' simply a poor anglicization of the french phrase 'p'il d'omatiste', that being the language of the author and of the book when first published?

    I-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. In the french version : "ils étaient prudents comme des diplomates et ils se racontaient des choses qui n'avaient point affaire à leurs sentiments naissants."

    https://books.google.fr/books?id=Ho8YCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=fantome+de+l%27op%C3%A9ra+diplomates&source=bl&ots=3FIGsb3ipi&sig=FwHx6_Okcl6N120rH2imVNeUe38&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF6YCA4rXLAhXI0xoKHRiiCB8Q6AEILzAD#v=onepage&q=fantome%20de%20l'op%C3%A9ra%20diplomates&f=false

    I think you don't need to understand french to solve that mystery...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Excellent Roland. Following your example, I then searched Google for fantome de l'opéra pildomates - and got no hits.

      I think that wraps it up. Thank you.

      Delete