cardsharp

plural cardsharps · alternative cardshark · alternative card sharp · alternative card-sharp

1. card gamesA professional cheater at card games.

   One of Tim’s great-grandparents was a cardsharp in the Wild West, and was shot dead during a game.

   5 more examples

   While thus running on, the knavish card-sharp was slowly, and with apparent fairness, cutting the pack, which was prepared by having every card but the honours of each suit cut at the ends, in so slight a degree, however, as not to shorten them enough to be detectible by an ordinary eye, though sufficiently to be felt by a fine and practised finger, which could thus ensure a court-card, while the red cards of the pack (or deck of cards, as they were then commonly called) were deprived of their proper size by a similar process of shaving off the sides, so as to make the turn-up either red or black at will of the player.

   1850, Henry Downes Miles, chapter XI, in Claude du Val, a Romance, of the Days of Charles the Second, Edwin Dipple, […], →OCLC, page 191

   'Why Moses,' said Satan, 'nor Angels nor sinners / Can live without eating; let's go to our dinners; / Men who play at old sledge cannot both be the winners; / The card-sharps, you know, lose the dimes to beginners; […]'

   1858, T[homas] L[ake] Harris, “Fourth Interview”, in Appendix to the Arcana of Christianity: The Song of Satan: A Series of Poems, […], New York, N.Y.: New Church Publishing Association, […], →OCLC, page l

   Whenever we used to want to take a rise out o' Bill after, we only had to ax him if he'd seen any more card sharps, and he'd get as mad as a hatter.

   1865 November 18, Robert P. Whitworth, “Mary Summers: A Romance of the Australian Bush”, in The Australian Journal: A Weekly Record of Literature, Science, and the Arts, volume I, number 12, Melbourne, Vic.; Sydney, N.S.W.: Clarson, Massina, and Co., printers and publishers, […], published 1866, →OCLC, chapter XVIII (The New Hut), page 178, column 1

   In hilly country sheep will sometimes get lost in small bands. [...] Should they prove unmanageable, refusing to travel, or running off from you, the adroit shepherd will practice against them a "string game" quite as effective as that the card sharp plays on the over-confident rustic. Catch the leader, or the whole party of rebels, and tie around one of the hind legs just above the hock joint, a piece of stout string— [...]

   1875, A. A. Ritchie, “The Art of Sheep Raising for Wool, Mutton, and Money. […]”, in Transactions of the California State Agricultural Society during the Year 1874, Sacramento, Calif.: G. H. Springer, state printer, →OCLC, page 465

   The cleverest card[-]sharp we ever saw—outside of good society—was a Greek by country as well as by profession; but all the money he picked up in the by-ways of the sporting world went at the hazard-table, and the poor rogue often wanted a dinner.

   1876 December 9, “A Run with Many Packs”, in Charles Dickens, editor, All the Year Round. A Weekly Journal. [...] With which is Incorporated Household Words, volume XVII, number 419 (New Series), London: Published at No. 26, Wellington Street; and by Messrs. Chapman & Hall, […], published 1877, →OCLC, page 307, column 2

   Synonyms: broadsman, cardshark, cardsharper, card mechanic, macer