# varlet
## English
### Etymology

From Middle English varlet, varlette, from Old French varlet, variant of vadlet, vallet, vaslet. Doublet of valet.

### Pronunciation

* (UK) IPA: /ˈvɑːlət/
* Audio (US):(file)

### Noun

varlet (plural varlets)
* (obsolete) A servant or attendant.
** 1840, [James Fenimore Cooper], chapter I, in Mercedes of Castile: Or, The Voyage to Cathay. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 19:The varlet, or follower of the merchant, who was still a youth, though his vigorous frame and embrowned cheek denoted equally severe exercise and rude exposure, started and reddened at this free inquiry, which was enforced by a hand slapped familiarly on his knee, and such a squeeze of the leg as denoted the freedom of the camp.
** 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, chapter 8, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk):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?
* (historical) Specifically, a youth acting as a knight's attendant at the beginning of his training for knighthood.
** 1891, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, The White Company, New York, N.Y., Boston, Mass.: Thomas Y[oung] Crowell & Company […], →OCLC, page 138:[T]here was a little, sleek, fat clerk of the name of Chaucer, who was so apt at rondel, sirvente, or tonson, that no man dare give back a foot from the walls, lest he find it all set down in his rhymes and sung by every underling and varlet in the camp.
* (archaic) A rogue or scoundrel.
** 1574, Augustine Marlorate [i.e., Augustin Marlorat], “[Revelation 2:2]”, in Arthur Golding, transl., A Catholike Exposition vpon the Reuelation of Sainct Iohn. […], London: […] H[enry] Binneman, for L[ucas] Harison, and G[eorge] Bishop, →OCLC, folio 32, recto:[W]hen the worlde is fraughted with ſo manye varlettes, that it will be a long time ere a man ſhall diſcerne the faythful from the Hipocrites.
** 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC: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.
** 1885–1886, Henry James, chapter VIII, in The Bostonians […], London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 16 February 1886, →OCLC, 1st book, pages 57–58: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.
* (obsolete, card games) The jack.

#### Translations
### References

* ↑ “varlet, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

### Anagrams

* retval, travel

## Old French
### Noun

varlet oblique singular, m (oblique plural varlez or varletz, nominative singular varlez or varletz, nominative plural varlet)
* Alternative form of vaslet