cardhouse

plural cardhouses · alternative card house · alternative card-house

1. countableA business establishment that hosts card-playing, especially one where patrons play poker.

   He spends six nights a week at the cardhouse.

   2003, Andy Bellin, Poker Nation, page 8

   2 more examples

   "Twas first to the cardhouse and then down to Maisie's," intoned that mournful ballad "The Cowboy's Lament." But most real-life trail riders went first to the bathtub and then to the haberdasher, if only because neither Maisie nor the cardhouse would truly welcome a man so long as he had the look and smell of a summer in the saddle.

   1973, William H. Forbis, The cowboys, page 183

   Caro's Law of Tells One of the first experts to describe Stage 3—poker players as actors—was Mike Caro, a specialist in draw poker as played in the cardhouses of Gardena, California.

   2006, Randy Burgess, Carl Baldassarre, Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells, page 20

2. attributiveuncountablegeographyA structure of plate-like mineral deposits that rest on each other's edges.

   The microstructures do not appear to conform entirely to either cardhouse or honeycomb structures.

   1967, Contributions in Oceanography - Issues 319-361, page 375

   2 more examples

   He also expressed the opinion that certain sensitive clays derived their properties from the fact that the flaky minerals were arranged in an unstable “cardhouse” fabric.

   1966, Clay Minerals Society, Clays and Clay Minerals

   The Champlain clays are believed to have a somewhat special arrangement of the individual soil particles such that the plate-like particles are oriented to each other in an edge to face arrangement in the undisturbed condition, i.e. "cardhouse" structure.

   1976, Geoffrey Reid McBoyle, Edward Sommerville, Canada's Natural Environment: Essays in Applied Geography

3. countableSynonym of house of cards (any sense).

   The photographer glanced up at them over a four-storeyed cardhouse, which he had built out of crispbread.

   1977, Tord Hubert, The Trap, page 30

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   On the other hand (and perhaps incompatibly) he was thought to be dangerously addicted to speculation: 'an inveterate theorist, an intellectual cardhouse builder'.

   2007, H. S. Jones, Intellect and Character in Victorian England, page 43

   Many of my earliest memories are mysteries I probably will never solve now that those who might have explained them to me are gone. I fall back on experience and intuition, build my fragile cardhouse of speculation, and hope my solutions are not ridiculously far from the mark.

   2011, Faye Moskowitz, And the Bridge Is Love

   Synonyms: house of cards