court card en · NOUN
Etymology
Unlike the numbered cards, these represent people of the kind that might be found at a royal court.
Meanings
-
A king, queen, jack, or sometimes ace in a standard deck of playing cards.
There are fifty-two outcomes possible when we turn up a card, and if we do it from a freshly and fairly shuffled pack, each possibility has an equal chance. Probabilistic reasoning can then go forward: we can solve, for instance, for whether most draws of seven cards involve two court cards, or whatever.
1999: Simon Blackburn, Think: A compelling introduction to philosophy, chapter 6: Reasoning, section 5: Plausible Reasonings, page 212 (Oxford University Press, paperback)The King, his father, wearing a very white sports shirt open at the throat and a very black blazer, sat at a spacious desk whose highly polished surface twinned his upper half in reverse, making of him a kind of court card.
1957 March 7, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 4.1, in Pnin, Heinemann, page 84:
- (UK, historical) A postcard measuring approximately 4·75″ × 3·5″, in use mainly circa 1894–1902.
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| court cards | Number=Plur | lexicographic |
Hypernyms
Synonyms
Translations (4)
fi kuvakortti (king, queen, or jack/knave playing card) · bg оньор (king, queen, or jack/knave playing card) · sv målare (king, queen, or jack/knave playing card) · sv klätt kort (king, queen, or jack/knave playing card)