Wednesday Word

I came across the word pierrot while reading The Phantom of the Opera:

"With his face in a mask trimmed with long, thick lace, looking a very pierrot in his white wrap, the viscount thought himself most ridiculous."

First off, I have to agree that the viscount (Raoul de Chagny, Our Hero) probably looked pretty ridiculous in this get-up. At the risk of baring my ignorance for all of cyberspace to see, I have to admit, however, that I didn't know the word pierrot.

Pierrot (pē' ə rō', Fr. pye rō') a stock comic character in old French pantomime, having a whitened face and wearing loose pantaloons and a jacket with large buttons


While the trusty Second College Edition of Webster's New World Dictionary that I got for Christmas from our dog, Flash, in the late 1980s gives Monsieur Pierrot a captitalized first initial, Leroux (or at least his translator) did not.  I can only assume this means that pierrot no longer refers to a name, but rather a type and has lost its status as a proper name.

(This wikipedia entry has images of Pierrot. This and a Google image search might just lead to something that looks pretty familiar.)