shikar

plural shikars

1. IndiacountableuncountableHunting, sport; a hunting expedition.

   They climbed up the ladder, and he mounted shikar fashion, treading first on the sharp edge of the heel and then into the looped-up tail.

   1924, EM Forster, A Passage to India, Penguin, published 2005, page 130

   1 more example

   Where other men took ten days to the Hills, Strickland took leave for what he called shikar, put on the disguise that appealed to him at the time, stepped down into the brown crowd, and was swallowed up for a while.

   1888, Rudyard Kipling, “Miss Youghal's Sais”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio Society, published 2007, page 25

2. countableuncountableA hunt.

   With us we had fifteen of the keenest and most cheerful hillman I have ever been associated with on a shikar.

   1954, Jim Corbett, The Temple Tiger and More Man-eaters of Kumaon, Oxford: Oxford University Press, published 1988, page 1

3. alternativecountableuncountableAlternative form of shikari (“a hunter or tracker”)

   I became an immense favourite with the simple inhabitants of the country, who called me the Burra Feringhee Shikar, or great European hunter[.]

   1855, [Michael] Rafter, chapter XVI, in Percy Blake; or, The Young Rifleman, volume III, London: Hurst and Blackett, page 249

present singular third person shikars · participle present shikarring · participle present shikaring · participle past shikarred · past shikarred · participle past shikared · past shikared

1. IndiaambitransitivedatedTo hunt; to go hunting.

   ‘I wish I could have made him a gun-boy. There's no fun in shikarring alone, and this fellow would have been a perfect shikarri. I wonder what in the world he is.’

   1893, Rudyard Kipling, “In the Rukh”, in Many Inventions, London: Macmillan and Co., page 198