Baster, noun and & adjective

/ˈbastə(r)/
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.
1952 L.G. Green Lords of Last Frontier 202Basters, the people of the Rehoboth ‘republic’ in South West Africa call themselves — not without pride. Now the Afrikaans word ‘baster’ means bastard, but it also means half-caste. These people are half-castes.
1966 J.P. van S. Bruwer S.W. Afr.: Disputed Land 28During the second half of the 19th century a small group of people known as Basters entered the Territory. They were the descendants of white fathers and Khoi mothers in the north-western districts of the Cape Colony...They..spoke Afrikaans.
1976 Cubitt & Richter South West 9Last to appear on the scene were the Basters, descendants of early Dutch colonists at the Cape. They..settled at Rehoboth under their kaptein Hermanus van Wyk in 1870...There is no innuendo in the word ‘Baster’, which is not translatable into the English ‘bastard’.
1985 E. Prov. Herald 12 July 3Afrikaners, coloureds and Basters belonged to the same ethnic tribe, a Deputy Minister told the National Assembly of the interim government here (sc. in Windhoek) yesterday.
1990 Sunday Times 11 Feb. 2‘I will be there on Monday,’ he said defiantly, demanding that Namibia’s 35 000 Baster people be granted the autonomy he claims is due under a 1976 SA Act of Parliament.
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.
1972 Beeton & Dorner in Eng. Usage in Sn Afr. Vol.3 No.2, 19Baster,..Used in compound common names of plants & trees implying: likeness or similarity in appearance or habit but inferior in quality, usu applied to timber trees, eg bastergeelhout..; likeness in habit or appearance but lacking some product, eg basteralwyn.
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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Bastard Hottentot, noun phrasen. phr.bat-eared fox, noun phrasen. phr.
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