>Is roman a word, I wonder?

assuming that you mean in the Scrabble® sense, yes. it is defined in the OSPD as "a metrical narrative of medieval France" -- how *do they choose which definition to go with?

according to _Word Freak_ (ycliu), they don't use the OSPD per se for competitive Scrabble, the definitions just get in the way. they simply have an official word list.

A romance; a novel. Esp. in phrases: roman à clef, a novel in which actual persons are introduced under fictitious names; roman à thèse, a novel that seeks to further a viewpoint or expound a theory; roman d'aventure = romance n. 2; roman de geste = chanson de geste; roman expérimental, a realistic novel based upon deterministic theories of human nature of an alleged scientific character; also fig.; roman fleuve, a sequence of self-contained novels; roman noir, a Gothic novel, a shocker, a thriller; roman policier, a story of police detection.