Even a woman may be a dragoman, for the terminal syllable is not an English word, even though we do, through long custom, make its plural -men, rather than -mans, as we should.
We borrowed the term from the French, who had borrowed in turn from Spain, and there it had come, through the Moors, as a transliteration of Arabic targuman.
When you hear some traveler use it, or meet it in the works of some author, be lenient; he wants to air his knowledge.
He’d rather say dragoman than the English equivalent, “interpreter.”
