vedette

• vidette

From French vedette.

• IPA^(key): /vəˈdɛt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

vedette (plural vedettes)

1. (historical, military) A sentinel, usually on horseback, stationed on the outpost of an army, to watch an enemy and give notice of danger.
   • 1815 June 19, Arthur Wellesley, Wellingon's Waterloo dispatch to Lord Bathurst:

     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.

   • 2021 February 16, Dan Richards, “Peak cabin: a fire-spotter's lonely vantage point in Washington state”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

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

2. (entertainment) A cabaret performer, usually the main female artist of a show.
   • 2005, Coco Fusco, Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas, Routledge, →ISBN, page 44:

     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.

• vedette (sentry) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• vedette (cabaret) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Vedette in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
• “vedette”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

From French vedette.

• IPA^(key): /vəˈdɛtə/

• Audio:

  (file)

vedette c (plural vedettes or vedetten, diminutive vedettetje n)

1. celebrity, star

   Synonyms: ster, beroemdheid, beroemde

Borrowed from Italian vedetta.

• IPA^(key): /və.dɛt/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Audio (Switzerland (Valais)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Somain)):

  (file)

vedette f (plural vedettes)

1. (slightly dated) star (celebrity)

   Les plus grandes vedettes étaient présentes lors de cet évènement.

   The biggest stars were present at this event.

2. (nautical) flagship
3. (lexicography) headword (word used as the title of a section)
4. (military, historical) vedette (sentry)
   • 1857, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary […]‎^[2], Paris: Michel Lévy Frères:

     À peine assise dans son coin, elle ferma les yeux et les rouvrit au bas de la côte, où elle reconnut de loin Félicité, qui se tenait en vedette devant la maison du maréchal.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• voler la vedette

• → Dutch: vedette
• → English: vedette
• → Italian: vedette
• → Polish: wedeta
• → Portuguese: vedeta
• → Romanian: vedetă
• → Spanish: vedete

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

From French vedette, from Italian vedetta.

• IPA^(key): /veˈdɛt/^[1]
• Rhymes: -ɛt

vedette f (invariable)

1. star (celebrity)

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

• IPA^(key): /veˈdet.te/
• Rhymes: -ette
• Hyphenation: ve‧dét‧te

vedette f

1. plural of vedetta

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

• IPA^(key): /veˈdet.te/, (traditional) /veˈdɛt.te/^[1]
• Rhymes: -ette, (traditional) -ɛtte
• Hyphenation: ve‧dét‧te, (traditional) ve‧dèt‧te

vedette

1. (archaic or colloquial) third-person singular past historic of vedere

vedette f (plural vedettes)

1. alternative spelling of vedete

• “vedette”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025