varlet

From Old French varlet. Compare valet.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈvɑːlət/

varlet (plural varlets)

1. (obsolete) A servant or attendant.
   • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. 8, The Electon

     The Winchester Manorhouse has fled bodily, like a Dream of the old Night […] . House and people, royal and episcopal, lords and varlets, where are they?

2. (historical) Specifically, a youth acting as a knight's attendant at the beginning of his training for knighthood.
3. (archaic) A rogue or scoundrel.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society 1973, p. 410:

     My lady to be called a nasty Scotch wh–re by such a varlet!—To be sure I wish I had knocked his brains out with the punchbowl.

   • 1886, Henry James, The Bostonians.

     He was false, cunning, vulgar, ignoble; the cheapest kind of human product […] The white, puffy mother, with the high forehead, in the corner there, looked more like a lady; but if she were one, it was all the more shame to her to have mated with such a varlet, Ransom said to himself, making use, as he did generally, of terms of opprobrium extracted from the older English literature.

4. (obsolete, card games) The jack.

• retval, travel

varlet m (oblique plural varlez or varletz, nominative singular varlez or varletz, nominative plural varlet)

1. Alternative form of vaslet