lascar

plural lascars · alternative Lascar · alternative lashkar · alternative laskar

1. historicalA sailor from India or Southeast Asia, especially as serving on a European ship.

   As for the voyage itself, his account of Mauritius, where the ship stopped, saw the appearance of Muslim lascars.

   2020, Sujit Sivasundaram, Waves Across the South, William Collins, published 2021, page 35

   2 more examples

   A motley crowd saunters along the streets — Lascars off a P. and O., blond Northmen from a Swedish barque, Japanese from a man-of-war, English sailors, Spaniards, pleasant-looking fellows from a French cruiser, negroes off an American tramp.

   1919, W. Somerset Maugham, “chapter 47”, in The Moon and Sixpence

   ...and what foreigner is it, exactly, that Pirate has in mind if it isn't that stateless lascar across his own mirror-glass, that poorest of exiles...

   1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

2. A tent-pitcher; also a type of artilleryman.
3. Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the Asian genera Pantoporia and Lasippa.