Trumps

How to spell trumps

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce trumps

What does trumps mean?

1. verbBeats, outranks, or overrides something else in importance or effect.
2. nounThe suit of cards that ranks above all the others for the current round of play.

Trumps in a sentence

• verb

  In this office, practical experience usually trumps a fancy degree.

• noun

  She swept the table once hearts were declared trumps.

• verb

  Safety always trumps convenience when the engineers sign off a design.

• noun

  Holding three trumps gave him a strong hand in the second round.

Where does trumps come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is an altered form of an older sense of 'triumph'. It traces back to the Latin triumphus, the public procession that celebrated a victorious Roman general, which itself was borrowed from the Greek thriambos, a hymn sung in honour of the wine god Dionysus. In the early 1500s a popular card game was known as 'triumph', and within that game the dominant suit picked up the clipped, casual pronunciation 'trump'. From the noun naming that winning suit grew the verb meaning to beat or override, since playing a trump card overcomes any ordinary card. The simple spelling is just the base 'trump' plus '-s', so the only real care needed is remembering it descends from 'triumph' rather than the trumpet you might expect.

How the word is built

• trump (winning suit, alteration of triumph)
• -s (plural / third-person singular)