Factotum (assistant)
Factotum ( Latin fac totum 'do everything!' ) Is a foreign word that emerged in the 16th century to describe a person who performs a variety of tasks in a household, business or other organization (e.g. monastery, school). Such a person is sometimes colloquially (regardless of gender) called "girl for everything".
Depending on the context and type of organization, the factotum can be an indispensable assistant in a high position of trust or a member of the house staff who takes on all those work for which no special domestic qualifications are required.
Culture
A famous example of a factotum is the barber (in French 'Figaro') in Gioachino Rossini's Italian opera The Barber of Seville from 1816. In the second scene in the first act, he sings:
Figaro qua, Figaro là,
Figaro su, Figaro giù.
Pronto, prontissimo
son come il fulmine,
sono il factotum della città.
Figaro here, Figaro there,
Figaro above, Figaro below,
ready, extremely ready,
I am like lightning,
am the factotum of the city.
Another famous factotum is the servant Passepartout (French for 'suitable for any occasion') from Jules Verne's novel Journey around the Earth in 80 Days from 1873.
Charles Bukowski chose factotum ( English factotum ) as the title of his book written between 1970 and 1974 about his time as a hobo in the United States in the 1940s. The Norwegian director Bent Hamer filmed this book in 2005 as Factotum with Matt Dillon in the role of the drinking and gambling addicted casual worker Henry Chinaski .
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Friedrich Kluge: Etymological dictionary of the German language .
- ^ Alfred Sellner: Latin in everyday life. VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1987, ISBN 978-3-92-812711-0 , p. 47.