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WHIST
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A card game for four players who form two partnerships; a pack of 52 cards is dealt and each side scores one point for each trick it takes in excess of six
Synonyms:
long whist; short whist; whist
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("whist" is a kind of...):
card game; cards (a game played with playing cards)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "whist"):
dummy whist (a form of whist with three players; four hands are dealt with the hand opposite the dealer being face up)
Black Maria; hearts (a form of whist in which players avoid winning tricks containing hearts or the queen of spades)
Context examples:
Mr. Wickham did not play at whist, and with ready delight was he received at the other table between Elizabeth and Lydia.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
He was a whist player himself, and perhaps might feel that it would not much amuse him to have her for a partner.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
The evidence of those who had played with him—Mr. Murray, Sir John Hardy, and Colonel Moran—showed that the game was whist, and that there was a fairly equal fall of the cards.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
No, whist.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Their first pause was at the Crown Inn, an inconsiderable house, though the principal one of the sort, where a couple of pair of post-horses were kept, more for the convenience of the neighbourhood than from any run on the road; and his companions had not expected to be detained by any interest excited there; but in passing it they gave the history of the large room visibly added; it had been built many years ago for a ball-room, and while the neighbourhood had been in a particularly populous, dancing state, had been occasionally used as such;—but such brilliant days had long passed away, and now the highest purpose for which it was ever wanted was to accommodate a whist club established among the gentlemen and half-gentlemen of the place.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I discovered afterwards that Miss Lavinia was an authority in affairs of the heart, by reason of there having anciently existed a certain Mr. Pidger, who played short whist, and was supposed to have been enamoured of her.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
The whist party soon afterwards breaking up, the players gathered round the other table and Mr. Collins took his station between his cousin Elizabeth and Mrs. Phillips.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Grant, who are always quarrelling, and that poking old woman, who knows no more of whist than of algebra.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
When the tea-things were removed, and the card-tables placed, the ladies all rose, and Elizabeth was then hoping to be soon joined by him, when all her views were overthrown by seeing him fall a victim to her mother's rapacity for whist players, and in a few moments after seated with the rest of the party.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Lydia talked incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had lost and the fish she had won; and Mr. Collins in describing the civility of Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, protesting that he did not in the least regard his losses at whist, enumerating all the dishes at supper, and repeatedly fearing that he crowded his cousins, had more to say than he could well manage before the carriage stopped at Longbourn House.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
