bagnard

French

Etymology

From bagne (“penal colony”) +‎ -ard.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ba.ɲaʁ/

Noun

bagnard m (plural bagnards, feminine bagnarde)

1. crook
2. convict, prisoner of a penal colony
   • 1992, Amélie Nothomb, translated by Alison Anderson, Hygiène de l'assassin; republished as Hygiene and the Assassin, 2010:

     Ce ne fut pas sans fierté que M. Tach s’était su atteint du redoutable syndrome d’Elzenveiverplatz, appelé plus vulgairement « cancer des cartilages », que le savant éponyme avait dépisté au XIX^e siècle à Cayenne chez une dizaine de bagnards incarcérés pour violences sexuelles suivies d’homicides, et qui n’avait plus jamais été repéré depuis.

     It was not without a certain sense of pride that Monsieur Tach learned he was afflicted with the dread Elzenveiverplatz Syndrome, more commonly referred to as “cartilage cancer,” which the eponymous learned physician had individuated in Cayenne in the nineteenth century among a dozen or so convicts imprisoned for sexual crimes followed by homicide, and which had never been diagnosed since that time.

Further reading

• “bagnard”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.