O. K. I know that:
One is Ace
Two is Deuce
Three is Trey
Does anybody know the names of the rest of the numbers?
What makes you think the other cards even *have *names? As far as I’m aware, they haven’t.
I have heard of people calling 5s “nickels” if they have more than one.
They do, even though you were not aware of it. Imagine that.
While we’re at it, I absolutely detest this question, in all its forms. It’s perfectly obvious what makes the OP think that, which is that the first three do, in fact, have well-known names. To pretend otherwise is to engage in pretentious intellectual snobbery.
There are multiple names for some of them, including some specific to poker, which are:
4 = sailboat
6 = kick
7= walking stick, mullet
8 = snowman, fat lady, racetrack
9 = Popeye
10 = dime
J = fishhook, hook
Q = lady
K = cowboy, kangaroo
A = rocket
Most of these are only used in the plural- ie., if you’re holding a pair in the hole in Texas Hold’em.
There are instances – in specific games perhaps – where some of the number cards get fancy names.
The first one I thought of is where 2’s and 3’s are either wild cards or are shown in pairs, in which case they’re “nits and boogers.”
One of our favorite wild card groupings was “fours, whores and one-eyed face cards” where the whores ought to be obvious. That’s almost half the deck!
If you were to expand the scope of the OP to include slang terms for the spots on dice, you could get even more hits.
[Moderator Note]
If you don’t know the answer to a question, it is much better to allow other people who do know the answer to respond to it, rather than bringing your own ignorance to everyone else’s attention. This is particularly true as a first response to an OP.
From the GQ Rules.
[Moderator Note]
While we’re at it, if you have a problem with a post, it is better to report it than to snark about it yourself.
From the Beginner’s Guide to Glossary of Terms on Straight Dope Message Boards
But I’m sure you know this already.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Some names that I’ve heard that don’t appear in the link or in posts here:
Jacks: cowboys, knights
Spades: swords
Diamonds: coins
Aces: orphans
Aces are also sometimes called Bullets.
Jacks are also called knaves.
More to the point, Jacks were originally called Knaves.
The jack of clubs was known as Pam in the popular 17th/18th century card game Loo, or Lanterloo, where it was the highest trump card.
Interestingly enough the word Pam comes from Pamphilus, a character from a 12th century Latin amatory poem: the same character is also the origin of the word pamphlet (the poem proved so popular with students and others that eventually any short document or work became known as a pamphlet.)
We used to call the kings with swords in their heads Suicide Kings. Although as I look, that’s only the king of hearts.
A pair of Queens is sometimes called Siegfried and Roy. And vice versa, I guess…
Joe
If I remember correctly, the 9♦ is the card James Bond draws to defeat Le Chiffre in the pivotal hand of baccarat in the novel Casino Royale. I seem to recall also that upon receiving this card, Bond associates it with the phrase ‘a whisper of love, a whisper of hate’, which is the title of chapter 13. Does anyone have a copy of the book handy to verify this recollection and to explain any connection?
And why are deuces called ducks? Alliteration? The two is called a duck in Bingo, too.
We also grouped the king of diamonds in as “suicide kings”, as that king has an axe pointed towards his head. I’m looking online, and while the king of hearts is definitely a suicide king, whether the king of diamonds is one seems to vary from group to group.
Weirdly, the King of Hearts also seems to be the only one without a moustache. Coincidence… or is it?
Whenever I play cards pretty much all of them get called “…that damned card!” at some point or another.