# A word origin question. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 18, 2000, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-word-origin-question/26038 "2000-07-18T23:58:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2000, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-word-origin-question/26038/1 "2000-07-18T23:58:14Z")
How did a card game come to be called ‘poker’? Is it what was done to cheaters? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![funneefarmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9fc348/32.png) [@funneefarmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/funneefarmer)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2000, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-word-origin-question/26038/2 "2000-07-19T00:04:40Z")
"The origin of the word poker is also well debated. Most of the dictionaries and game historians say that it comes from an eighteenth-century French game, poque. However, there are other references to pochspiel, which is a German game. In pochspiel, there is an element of bluffing, where players would indicate whether they wanted to pass or open by rapping on the table and saying, “Ich Poche!” Some say it may even have derived come the Hindu word, pukka. Yet another possible explanation for the word poker, is that it came from a version of an underworld slang word, “poke,” a term used by pickpockets. Card sharps who used the 20-card cheating game to relieve a sucker from his poke may have used that word among themselves, adding an r to make it “poker.” The thought was that if the sharps used the word “poker” in front of their victims, those wise to the underworld slang would not surmise the change. There are those who also believe that “poke” probably came from “hocus-pocus”, a term widely used by magicians. The game of poker later evolved to include 32 cards, and eventually the modern day deck of 52, not counting the two Jokers." From [Poker Pages](http://www.pokerpages.com/pokerinfo/articles/history.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2000, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-word-origin-question/26038/3 "2000-07-19T00:23:45Z")
Poker?! I don’t even know her! ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2000, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-word-origin-question/26038/4 "2000-07-19T00:57:17Z")
Thanks, funnee. Smeghead, you are just a fount of lame jokes. How about this one: Oyster? I don’t even know her! Pretty bad, but what do you expect from jokes a BASIC program could do? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Sheepshead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ccd318/32.png) [@Mr.Sheepshead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Sheepshead)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2000, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-word-origin-question/26038/5 "2000-07-19T02:21:05Z")
While poker is not anywhere near my favorite card game (_cough_ sheepshead _cough_), I actually was reading about the origins of poker the other night. I’m stealing this text out of a wonderful card book called _Scarne On Cards_, which may be out of print (Copyright on mine is 1974). For those of you who don’t know, Scarne is/was quite the authority on all manner of cards. He computed statistics and strategies for games well before computers were given a crack at it. For those too lazy to research him (I would be), I will say this guy knows what the fuck he is talking about… > [@](#): > > - > > (Note: this is Scarne’s narration) > > The first mention of the game, or even the word “Poker” has been traced by the author Johnathon H. Green, a reformed gambler, who in certain writings dated 1834 described the rules for a game then being played on the Mississippi steamboats and added that this was the first time the rules of the game had ever been published. He called it poker. And he noted scrupulously that The American Hoyle then current neglected entirely to mention the rules . (Sheep’s note: Scarne has an unhealthy hatred towards Hoyle) > > … > > The game did not appear in The American Hoyle until some thirty years later and then it was not called Poker. It was called “Bluff”. > > … > > Some of the features we regard as peculiar to Poker are unquestionably French in origin, but the game’s structure is Iranian. (Sheep’s note: bluffing especially; it is from an Iranian game called “As” [means “Ace”] which was played very much like modern poker, winning by pairs &c.) > > … > > Most common dictionaries and almost all writers on the game say flatly that the word “Poker” is the American corruption of “Poque” the name of a French game of considerable antiquity. To my previous yelps (Sheep again: he complained quite a bit on the shoddily researched “history of poker” given by most writers) let me add this: I can’t endorse this kind of breezy scholarship. I never played Poque, I have never seen it played, I don’t know it’s structure, and I never encountered anyone better informed on the subject than I. The name may be a corruption not of Poque but of Pochspiel, the name of a very venerable German game in which one element was bluffing-bragging, scaring out the grocery clerks. It may have come from the German immigrants’ habit of indicating whether they’d pass or open by rapping on the table and saying “Ich Poche!” Somebody has tried to trace Poker to the French “poche” (pocket). As (Sheep: the aforementioned game) like Chess and Backgammon was swapped between Persia and India for a couple of thousand years, and I’ve heard Poker traced to the Hindu “pukka”, but the reasoning seems to me shaky. (Sheep: not that he tells you why, he ends there) > \* And, lucky for you **Derleth** , I can even translate the German which Scarne for some reason neglects to do. “Poche” means hit or pound. Those of you who know sheepshead (the game, not me) may recognize this as the German way of saying “I crack”, but literally it means “I hit!”. And Pochspiel would be “the Pound Game”. Whew. Time to go play a little sheep I think…