card house

plural card houses

1. Alternative form of cardhouse.
   1. A house of cards.

      So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes.

      1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

      3 more examples

      And if you look carefully at the card house, you will see that top two cards are aces of clubs.

      2006, D. B. Smithee, The Dog Poker Code, page 26

      Place two of them together on top of the card case as shown in Figure 30 to form the walls of the card house.

      2009, Karl Fulves, Foolproof Card Tricks for the Amateur Magician, page 71

      Where did that come from, he thinks. Ah, We're the card house now. There's never a situation where one card is threatened, the others left in peace; they're all threatened together and at once.

      2013, Kim Stanley Robinson, The Gold Coast: Three Californias, page 306

   2. A business where patrons play cards.

      He owned a goulash or card house, on upper Broadway, where I got many laughs.

      1956, Across the Board, page 121

      2 more examples

      Feeling surer of his bearings, once he'd strode down to the creek and back again, Longarm quietly entered the noisy card house, drifted to the bar, and ordered a schooner of suds to nurse as he lounged there with one boot on the brass rail and the brim of his Stetson shading his tanned face from the coal-oil lamp right above him.

      2003, Tabor Evans, Longarm and Town-Taming Tess

      So when you walk into a casino or card house, you can expect to find more people playing more varieties of poker more frequently than ever.

      2004, Scott Tharler, Winning Casino Gambling, page 132