vedette

plural vedettes · alternative vidette

1. historicalgovernmentA sentinel, usually on horseback, stationed on the outpost of an army, to watch an enemy and give notice of danger.

   My goal was Desolation Peak, the cabin where rookie vedette Jack Kerouac spent 63 eventful days in the summer of 1956.

   2021 February 16, Dan Richards, “Peak cabin: a fire-spotter's lonely vantage point in Washington state”, in The Guardian

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   The enemy made no effort to pursue Marshal Blücher. On the contrary, a patrole which I sent to Sombref in the morning found all quiet; and the enemy's vedettes fell back as the patrole advanced.

   1815 June 19, Arthur Wellesley, Wellingon's Waterloo dispatch to Lord Bathurst

2. entertainmentA cabaret performer, usually the main female artist of a show.

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   Josephine Baker arrived in Cuba in 1951. When this famous black American vedette arrived—she who had first enraptured Paris and later the rest of Europe—Rita Montaner played a trick on her. La Baker, as well as Cuban vedettes and rumba dancers, had conquered Europe by selling exoticism to an avid European public.

   2005, Coco Fusco, Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas, Routledge, →ISBN, page 44