rastaquouère

• rastacouère

Borrowed from French rastaquouère, from South American Spanish rastacuero.

rastaquouère (plural rastaquouères)

1. (derogatory) A social upstart, especially from a Mediterranean or Latin American country; a smooth untrustworthy foreigner.
   • 1992, Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America, London, New York: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 304:

     Like the prodigal rastaquouères—those Latin American millionaires who flaunted their wealth in Paris in the hope of gaining entry into the beau monde—writers and intellectuals loved to put on cosmopolitan airs after visiting the French capital—they had left their Hispanic backwaters and could now swim with the tide of modern life.

   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, “Bilocations”, in Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 640:

     That is, willing to drop the surveillance and shelve the files of all his other current assignments, to concentrate on this band of rastaquouères who had blown so problematically into town.

Borrowed from Spanish rastacuero.

• IPA^(key): /ʁas.ta.kwɛʁ/

rastaquouère m or f (plural rastaquouères)

1. (derogatory) rastaquouère

   Synonym: parvenu

   • 1927, Marcel Proust, chapter 3, in Le Temps retrouvé [Time Regained] (À la recherche du temps perdu)‎^[1]:

     Mais leur nom ne devait son lustre qu’à leur situation d’alors et n’était plus porté par personne, on ne savait même pas qui je voulais dire si je parlais d’eux, et essayant d’épeler le nom, on croyait à des rastaquouères.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• “rastaquouère”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.