English

Alternative forms

• lansquenette (card game)

Noun

lansquenet ‎(countable and uncountable, plural lansquenets)

1. (countable, historical) Any of a class of German mercenaries in the 16th and 17th centuries.
   • 1960, AM Holt, translating Gottfried Keller, Green Henry, Calder Publications 2010, p.440:

     […] arising out of this festival there was established an individual lansquenet tradition, in speech and outward appearance, and the bare, sunburnt necks of the vagabond soldiers, their baggy garments hanging in shreds, and their short swords, could be seen all over the country for long afterwards.

2. (uncountable) A card game, used for gambling.
   • 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 29686887 , chapter I:

     “I'm through with all pawn-games,” I laughed. “Come, let us have a game of lansquenet. Either I will take a farewell fall out of you or you will have your sevenfold revenge”.

   • 1962, Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire:

     One could see part of the dimly lit court where under an enclosed poplar two soldiers on a stone bench were playing lansquenet.

   • 2007, Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons, tr. Helen Constantine, p.196:

     And so it was over the game of lansquenet that I scored my first triumph.

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