Blackjack

How to spell blackjack

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce blackjack

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does blackjack mean?

1. nounA casino card game in which players try to reach a card total of twenty-one without exceeding it.
2. nounA short, leather-covered club used as a hand weapon.

Blackjack in a sentence

• He lost most of his holiday budget at the blackjack table.

• The security guard kept a blackjack tucked inside his jacket.

• The casino added a new blackjack dealer for the busy weekend.

• The detective described the weapon as a heavy blackjack rather than a pistol.

Where does blackjack come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a straightforward English compound of 'black', the colour word that goes back to the Old English 'blaec' meaning dark or inky, and 'jack', a remarkably versatile word that since medieval times has stood for an ordinary man, a serving lad, and by extension all sorts of useful devices and the knave in a deck of cards. The card-game sense arose in nineteenth-century America, where the game of twenty-one paid a special bonus when a player drew the jack of spades together with the ace of spades, a black-suited 'jack' that gave the game its memorable name; the name stuck even after the bonus rule faded. The weapon sense, a short leather-covered bludgeon, draws on the same 'jack' tradition of naming handy objects, with 'black' describing its dark leather; it became common in the United States in the later 1800s. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises beyond remembering it is written as one solid word.

How the word is built

• black (dark in colour)
• jack (the knave card; also a generic word for a tool or device)