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Card-playing   /kɑrd-plˈeɪɪŋ/   Listen
Card-playing

adjective
1.
Preoccupied with the pursuit of pleasure and especially games of chance.  Synonyms: betting, dissipated, sporting.  "A betting man" , "A card-playing son of a bitch" , "A gambling fool" , "Sporting gents and their ladies"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Card-playing" Quotes from Famous Books



... and Flora is more interesting. Under the guise of a story it has something to say on many questions of importance. We know now why Charlotte never learnt to dance until she went to Brussels, and why children's games were unknown to her, for here are many mild diatribes against dancing and card-playing. The British Constitution and the British and Foreign Bible Society receive a considerable amount of criticism. But in spite of this didactic weakness there are one or two pieces of really picturesque writing, notably ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... of autumn my friend Fabris introduced me to a family in the midst of which the mind and the heart could find delicious food. That family resided in the country on the road to Zero. Card-playing, lovemaking, and practical jokes were the order of the day. Some of those jokes were rather severe ones, but the order of the day was never to get angry and to laugh at everything, for one was to take every jest pleasantly or be thought a bore. Bedsteads ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... hurried away to Krzykiewicz's house for a game of cards, for they would often arrange such card-playing evenings now at this, now at another actor's home, to which they would invite many of ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... plain to me that the General's peculiar method of card-playing had, thus far, not been discovered and exposed. He might keep doubtful company, and might (as I afterward heard) be suspected in certain quarters. But that he still had, formally-speaking, a reputation to preserve, was proved by the appearance of the two gentlemen ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... hunting and fishing; and the average habitant did both to his heart's content. In the winter there was a great deal of visiting back and forth among neighbours, even on week-days. Dancing was a favourite diversion and card-playing also. Gambling at cards was more common among the people than suited either the priests or the civil authorities, as the records often attest. Less objectionable amusements were afforded by the corvees recreatives or gatherings at a habitant's home ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... sick, I give you my word, Miss Lascelles, when I think of the vast sums of money that are squandered every year in ways which leave nothing to show for the expenditure. Take gambling for instance. I've heard that thousands of pounds are lost every year at card-playing and horse-racing. The money only changes hands, I know; but what good does it do? If a man can afford to part with a thousand pounds in such a way, how much better it would be for him and everybody else if he would expend it in furnishing a certain number of ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... the pilgrims on the Oscar II. were much annoyed at the prohibition of card-playing on board. "What is the use," they asked, "of crying Pax when there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various

... century was worse, if anything, than earlier periods, for it furthered what might be called the evangelistic slant toward novel-reading, the attitude that neatly classified this form of self-indulgence with dancing, card-playing, hard drinking, and loose living of every description. It is true that the intellectuals and worldly folk in general did not share this prejudice. Walter Scott had made novel-reading common among the well-read; but the narrower sectarians in England, the people ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... several other young men, of like tastes and habits, used to meet weekly at one another's houses, in turn, for card-playing and carousing; and at these meetings he used to be the very life of the party, the gayest of the gay. But what should he do now? It would be no easy matter to confess to his young associates the change that had taken place ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... made the discovery that his two brothers spent a great deal of their time in the pleasant though unprofitable occupation of card-playing with two or three of the other impecunious young men of the neighborhood, he remonstrated with them on this apparent waste of time. When he later discovered that they were becoming so engrossed in the game that they had but little time to plant, sow or reap, ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... rushes were much alike in general character, some peculiarity attached to each of them. Jim Crow was famous for its vigorous and varied rascality; Simpson's Ranges became notorious as the most reckless gambling-field in the country. Card-playing was the recreation the diggers most indulged in here, if we except a decided penchant for Chow-baiting. Done found that already the gambling propensity had impressed itself on the lead, and the luckiest ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... Peter held office the incumbent was noted for his card-playing propensities, and the clerk was much addicted to cock-fighting. The following couplet relating to ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... speak or write with pleasure and satisfaction of escaping from the bugbear of sins against morality or against one's neighbour; from the bugbear of dishonesty or theft; of taking away a person's character; of running away with his wife. I am convinced that it is the invented crimes of card-playing, theatre-going, and the like to which they are alluding: it could not surely be otherwise; and that makes it all the more unfortunate that before misusing a technical term like the word "sin," and thus perhaps misleading some young and ardent mind, such writers could not follow Father Wasmann's ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... card-playing is subordinated to the shrewd ends of diplomacy. Dr. Busch, the press-agent of Bismarck during the Franco-Prussian war, tells us that Bismarck once made this ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... the baronial seat had been bought by a rich tradesman. He was the very pedlar they had made fun of and poured beer into a stocking for him to drink; but honesty and industry bring one forward, and now the pedlar was the possessor of the baronial estate. From that time forward no card-playing was permitted there. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... Card-playing and novel-reading were not the only cases in which Mr. Hazard took a liberal view of his functions. His theology belonged to the high-church school, and in the pulpit he made no compromise with the spirit of concession, but in all ordinary matters ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... past, they belonged to another state of being. Yet I never struck a more jovial crew. Men staggering under huge sides of frozen beef; men struggling up cliffs with kerosine tins full of water; men digging; men cooking; men card-playing in small dens scooped out from the banks of yellow clay—everyone wore a Bank Holiday air;—evidently the ranklings and worry of mankind—miseries and concerns of the spirit—had fled the precincts of ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... never failed, watched that glorious fluttering with quiet pride and satisfaction. He was getting to those years when a man of action dislikes interruption of the grooves into which his activity has fallen. He pursued his hunting, racing, card-playing, and his very stealthy alms and services to lame ducks of his old regiment, their families, and other unfortunates—happy in knowing that Gyp was always as glad to be with him as he to be with her. Hereditary gout, too, had begun to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... good business man, unless we call horse-racing, fox-hunting, and card-playing, business. His overseer was entrusted with every thing on the plantation, and allowed to manage about as he pleased, while the Captain enjoyed himself in receiving calls from his wealthy neighbors, and in ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... himself, his answer was, that he had been stationed in the neighbourhood of an excellent library, that he had been allowed free access to the books, and that they had, at the most critical time of his life, decided his character, and saved him from being a mere smoking, card-playing, punch-drinking lounger. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... appetite, and adds that, having eaten, he "Quaffs a whole tunnel of tobacco smoke"; and old Robert Burton, in satirically enumerating the accomplishments of "a complete, a well-qualified gentleman," names to "take tobacco with a grace," with hawking, riding, hunting, card-playing, dicing and the like. The qualifications for a gallant were described by another writer in 1603 as "to make good faces, to take Tobacco well, to spit well, to laugh like a waiting gentlewoman, to lie well, to blush for nothing, to ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... age of forty-two, when already worldly-wise and blase, he had fancied himself in love with the daughter of one of his club friends—Marquis de Neufontaine, an old rascal—a nobleman, but one whose card-playing was more than open to suspicion, and who would have been expelled from the club more than once but for the influence of M. Godefroy, The nobleman was only too happy to become the father-in-law of a man who would pay his debts, and without any scruples he handed over his daughter—a ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee

... of reserve, shady hotel-keeper, sensualist and craven, with his insane malice. To these enter as pretty a company of miscreants as ever sailed the Southern seas: the sinister Jones, misogynist to the point of fine frenzy, nonconformist in the matter of card-playing, and thereafter frank bandit with a high ethic as to the superiority of plain robbery under arms over mere vulgar swindling—a gentleman with a code, in fact; his strictly incomparable "secretary," Ricardo of the rolling eyes and gait ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... swollen from the punishment I had inflicted upon him. Nevertheless, he was faultlessly dressed in full evening costume, and I rightly conjectured he was going to spend the night in some fashionable dissipation such as dancing or card-playing. ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer

... by card-playing?" asked Dietrich rather contemptuously, for he had made up his mind about ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri

... beauties, and far more sociable than at Cleve. He is in very good humor; and makes less complaining about his ailments than usual. Nothing can be more frivolous than our occupations here:" mere verse-making, dancing, philosophizing, then card-playing, dining, flirting; merry as birds on the bough (and Silesia invisible, except to oneself and two others). ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... courtyards of the ancient convent, where they are permitted to meet in common and spend a considerable portion of their time. Here they may be seen in groups, most of them ragged and greasy, squatted on the flags, card-playing—and cheating when they can—now and then quarrelling, but always talking loud ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... indicated great wealth, and that generous hospitality which is now a tradition. His time was passed in overseeing his large estate, and in out-of-door sports, following the hounds or fishing, exchanging visits with prominent Virginia families, amusing himself with card-playing, dancing, and the social frivolities of the day. But he neglected no serious affairs; his farm, his stock, the sale of his produce, were all admirably conducted and on a plane of widely recognized honor and integrity. He took great interest ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... themselves. They are very careful not to be caught in marriage, and talk about women much as a crafty knowing salmon might be presumed to talk about anglers. The ladies are given to dancing, of course, and are none of them nearly so old as you might perhaps be led to imagine. They greatly eschew card-playing; but, nevertheless, now and again one of them may be seen to lapse from her sphere and fall into that below, if we may justly say that the votaries of whist are below the worshippers of Terpsichore. Of the pious set much needs not be said, as their light has never been ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... England. Jolley Allen had cards constantly for sale—"Best Merry Andrew, King Harry and Highland Cards a Dollar per Doz." and also "Blanchards Great Mogul Playing Cards." The fine for selling these cards must have been a dead letter, for we find in the newspapers proof of the prevalence of card-playing. ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... enfolded in a cloud of tobacco smoke, John with his old port at his elbow, and Charlie Webster and I flanked by our whiskies and soda, all just as if I had never stirred from my easy chair, instead of having spent an exciting month or so among sharks, dead men, blood-lapping ghosts, card-playing skeletons ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... care of, slavery, views on, charity, social life, headquarters life, dinners, levees, bows, ceremony, hatred of, conversation, tea, liking for, dancing, fondness of, staff, simple habits, dress of, Rules of Civility, neatness of, food, horsemanship, fishing, fondness for, card-playing, theatre, fondness for, embarrassment, library of, newspapers, abuse, sensitiveness to, friendships of, godfather, pall-bearer, Indian friends, [Indian] name, assassin, temper, quarrel of Hamilton with, children, relations with, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... County of Scotland, in the State of Missouri, back in the ante-bellum days there lived one Solomon Davis, whose chronic horror was card-playing. The evils of this life were in his judgment largely to be attributed to this terrible habit. It was his belief that if the Grand Jury would only take hold of the matter in the right spirit, a stop could be put to the "nefarious habit of card-playing, which ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... suppose he has no interest to help him on. He is very fond of Natural History and various scientific matters, and he is hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position. He has no money to spare—hardly enough to use; and that has led him into card-playing—Middlemarch is a great place for whist. He does play for money, and he wins a good deal. Of course that takes him into company a little beneath him, and makes him slack about some things; and yet, with all that, looking at him as a whole, I think he is one of the most blameless ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... said poor John, with a foolish pang that seemed to rend his heart. Oh, if that scamp, that cheat, that low betting, card-playing rascal were but here! he would capital-fellow him. To take not herself only, but the dear pet name that she had said was ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... preachers whom his mother loved to frequent, but rather spoke as one man of the world to other sinful people, who might be likely to profit by good advice. The unhappy man just gone, had begun as a farmer of good prospects; he had taken to drinking, card-playing, horse-racing, cock-fighting, the vices of the age; against which the young clergyman was generously indignant. Then he had got to poaching and to horse-stealing, for which he suffered. The divine rapidly drew striking ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a house lying just about here." Again he touched the map. "It's a sort of little junk-shop with a ramshackle house attached, all cellars and rabbit-hutches, as you might say, overhanging a disused cutting which is filled at high tide. Opium is to be had there and card-playing goes on, and I won't swear that you couldn't get liquor. But it's well ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... the table was the chef des claqueurs or head of the paid applauders at all the theatres. Then it would be at a private table-d'hote of lorettes, where there was after dinner a little private card-playing. I heard afterwards that two or three unprincipled gamblers found their way into this nest of poor little innocents and swindled them out of all their money. When I was well in funds I would dine at Magny's, where, in those days, one could get such a dinner for ten francs as ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... renowned for its card-playing, had rarely seen so terrible a game as it saw that night. It began at eleven o'clock and was still in progress at five in the morning. Enormous sums lay on the green cloth, changed hands and direction, heaped up, scattered, reunited; fortunes were swallowed up in that colossal ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... a woman, certainly. For a man, yes. There was plenty of rough sport and card-playing, and a good deal of drinking. The men were full of character, often full of ability. But there was no outlet—and a wretched education. My great-grandfather might have been saved by a commission in the army. But ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... set out for the theatre, he spent most of his afternoons at the Garden Club, where there was a good deal of the game of poker being played by young gentlemen in the up-stairs rooms. And sometimes he returned thither after the performance, seeking anew the distraction of card-playing and betting, until he became notorious as the fiercest plunger in the place. Nobody could "bluff" Lionel Moore; he would "call" his opponent if he himself had nothing better than a pair of twos; and many a solid handful of sovereigns he had ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... if some power outside of himself had taken him unexpectedly at advantage to-night, and wrung this thing from him. Life was not much to look forward to,—the stretch it had been before: study, and the war, and hard common sense,—the theatre,—card-playing. Not being a man, I cannot tell you how much his loss amounted to. I know, going down the rutted wagon-road, his mild face fell slowly into a haggard vacancy foreign to it: one or two people at the tavern where he stopped asked him if he were ill: I think, too, that he prayed once or twice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... newcomers, adrift here and there in the straw. Their weariness was alleviated. They set about writing and card-playing. That evening I dated my letter to Marie "at the Front," with a flourish of pride. I understood that glory consists in doing what others have done, in being able to say, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... referred to, while a big court-martial was there in session, and he, with other subalterns, had come as witnesses. There had been dinners and dancing and fun and flirtation, both at the post and in Portland. There had been card-playing in which he was easy winner, and not a little of his winnings had gone for wine. There had been foolish things said in pink little ears, and even written in silly missives that now he would have been glad to recall, but—but no harm to him as yet had come from them. There had even ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... most splendid description. It contained one hundred and sixty beds; and the ladies had a distinct cabin. On the deck were numerous conveniences, such as baggage-rooms, smoking-rooms, &c. The general occupation, during the voyage, was card-playing. In the houses of two gentlemen whom Mr. Fearon visited near Fishkill, he was much gratified by the style of living, the substantial elegance of the furniture, and the mental talents of the company. Here he found both comfort and cleanliness, requisites ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... between Tennessee and Kentucky. He represents himself, with the usual inverted pride of a class-leader, as having been a wild, vicious youth; but the catalogue of his crimes embraces nothing less venial than card-playing, horse-racing, and dancing, and it is hard to see what different amusements could have been found ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... the contrary not withstanding. The stuff you read about me in the papers and books, about me being a lady-killer, is all wrong. There's not an iota of truth in it. I guess I've done more than my share of card-playing and whiskey-drinking, but women I've let alone. There was a woman that killed herself, but I didn't know she wanted me that bad or else I'd have married her—not for love, but to keep her from killing herself. She was the best of the boiling, but I never gave her any encouragement. I'm telling ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London



Words linked to "Card-playing" :   betting, dissipated, indulgent, sporting



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