Baster, noun and & adjective
- Forms:
- Also with small initial.
- Origin:
- South African Dutch, DutchShow more South African Dutch, half-caste, from Dutch bastaard, baster bastard.
A. noun
1. In historical contexts. Bastard sense 1.
1790 tr. of F. Le Vaillant’s Trav. II. 344These Boshmen..far from being a distinct species..are only a promiscuous assemblage of mulattoes, negroes and mestizos, of every species, and sometimes of Hottentots and Basters.
1962 F.C. Metrowich Scotty Smith 196Scotty really enjoyed himself exercising magisterial authority over the Hottentots, Basters and Bushmen who came under his jurisdiction.
2. Rehoboth. Also attributive.
1936 A.J. Goldblatt in J.J.L. Sisson S. Afr. Judicial Dict. (1960) 85In this territory the term ‘baster’ when it is ascribed to a person’s race is well known to refer to the members of the Rehoboth Bastard Community.
1990 Tribute Sept. 144The Basters of Rehoboth were another wave of immigration (numbering little more than 17,500 today) from the 19th-century Cape Colony. They came to occupy land that many other Namibian groups claimed. Cattle raids between the Basters and the indigenous communities were the order of the day. Even after independence the Basters are clamouring for a separate ‘homeland’.
B. adjective Qualifying the names of numerous plants which are similar in appearance to the original variety, but inferior in quality; Bastard adjective.
- Note:
- Rarely used in the original sense of ‘hybrid’.
1966 C.A. Smith Common Names 72Baster,..The term most commonly used in the sense of ‘mock’ or ‘false’ and then implying lack of superior qualities. In this sense the term ‘baster’ is found in the names of timber trees, with which it was most probably first associated. The earliest record with this meaning is basteranyswortel recorded by Burchell in 1811.
1990 S. Rowles in Weekend Post 16 June (Leisure) 5A highlight..was a sighting of a baster kokerboom (Aloe pillansii), the rarest plant in the Richtersveld.
Rehoboth. Also attributive.
Qualifying the names of numerous plants which are similar in appearance to the original variety, but inferior in quality; Bastard adjective.
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