All 15 Uses of

tartar
in
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Looking up at him, his head level with the top bunk, was the lean figure of The Tartar.†
*

"S 854," The Tartar read from the white strip that had been stitched to the back of his black jacket.†

He turned, looking around for another victim, but now everybody, in dim corners and under the lights, in upper bunks and in lower, had thrust their legs into their black wadded trousers or, already dressed, had wrapped their coats around themselves and hurried to the door to get out of the way until The Tartar had left.†

And, protesting merely for the sake of form, he hitched up his trousers (a bedraggled scrap of cloth had been sewn on them, just above the left knee, with a faded black number), slipped on his jacket (here the same digits appeared twice—on the chest and on the back), fished his valenki from the heap on the floor, put his hat on (with his number on a patch of cloth at the front), and followed The Tartar out of the barrack room.†

But The Tartar in his old army coat with the greasy blue tabs walked at a steady pace, as though the cold meant nothing to him.†

They walked into the staff quarters and The Tartar led him straight to the guardroom; and Shukhov realized, as he bad guessed on the way there, that he wasn't being sent to the guardhouse at all—it was simply that the guardroom floor needed scrubbing.†

The Tartar told him he was going to let him off, and ordered him to scrub the floor.†

He thanked The Tartar for letting him off and said: "From now on I'll never get up late again.†

The Tartar was there again, cutting across the parade ground with long, rapid strides in the direction of the staff quarters.†

Shukhov was smart enough to hide from The Tartar around a corner of the barracks—the guard would stick to him if he caught him again.†

Definitions:

(1) (tartar as in: tartar on the teeth)
calcified deposits on the teeth, formed by the continuous presence of dental plaque (also called calculous)
(2) (meaning too common or rare to warrant focus)
meaning too common or too rare to warrant focus:

Do not confuse this with the proper noun, Tartar, which references a central Asian people once known for their ferocity in battle.

The expression tartar sauce refers to a mayonnaise-based sauce commonly served with seafood and sometimes spelled tartare sauce. You may also see steak tartar in reference to a ground beef dish that is eaten raw; though the preferred spelling of the dish is steak tartare.

Much more rarely, tartar can reference anyone with a bad temper, or it can reference a reddish crust or sediment in wine casks.