On one hand, your character and his patron, Comte de Saint Germain, do engage many a noble in what appears to be an innocent card game. Despite this nagging feeling that the good ol’ days were behind me, though, every time Card Shark’s split-second gambles paid off, I couldn’t help being reeled back in.Ĭard Shark, the latest take on card games from Nerial (who gave us the excellent Reigns), almost immediately establishes itself as a different kind of game entirely. The more I worked my way up the food chain, the more I wished I was back at my humble but satisfying roots. More importantly, as satisfying as my hustling game had become, executing on it began to border on tedium. However, I wished that I cared more about who I was hustling, who I aligned myself with, and the why of it all over the course of my adventures in Card Shark. Arsene Lupin himself would have had a hard time getting one over on me, and as much as I’m a straight-shooter in real life, I grew enchanted with hustling my way through the frivolous French nobility on my way to the top. Over the course of mere hours, I’d somehow gone from a hapless server to France’s premier gentlemen thief and gambler. ISBN 0-19-861258-3.I have to admit that I was at least a little impressed with myself near the end of my time with Card Shark. Common compound nouns have been formed from ‘shark’ that address both meanings, such as loan shark in the “prey greedily” category and pool shark in the “superior skill” category.īarbara “all sharks, finned or otherwise, are best avoided” Mikkelson The Oxford English Dictionary defines a sharp as “A worthless and impecunious person who gains a precarious living by sponging on others, by executing disreputable commissions, cheating at play, and petty swindling a parasite a sharper.” While that use of the word is rarely encountered these days, remnants of it are still with us, such as when we accuse someone of engaging in “sharp practices” (meaning the cutting of corners to achieve desired ends - while the person so engaged may be staying within the strict letter of the law, his behavior could still be regarded as unethical and suspect).Īs for the word shark, in addition to encompassing the species of flesh-eating fish it identifies, it has over time come to serve as a label for certain dislikable characters: those who prey greedily upon others (such as successful businesspeople famous more for their love of profit than for adherence to ethics) and those who by virtue of superior skill outmaneuver less capable opponents (highly effective divorce attorneys, for instance). If you thought the answer might be found via looking at the words sharp and shark absent the word card, that pursuit also leads down a blind alley, because some definitions of both those words contain elements of cheating or connivance. (By the way, the “shark” in question has nothing to do with carnivorous fish it instead likely entered the English language via the German schurke, a word that in the 16th century had the meaning of a cheat or However, both sharper and shark (in the sense of one who cheats) antedate all of the above, sharper to 1681 and shark to 1599, evidence which could be seen as giving the nod to shark. A print sighting of card sharp dates to 1884 and one of card sharper to 1859, while the first print sighting of card shark takes us back only to 1942 - evidence which would seem to settle matters. (Were that not so, one would have to wonder at the naming of the 1978 TV game show Card Sharks, on which contestants tried to guess whether the next card in a sequence was higher or lower than its predecessor.)Īs to whether card sharp or card shark entered the English language first, the answer is far from straightforward. Both terms still mean someone skilled in cheating at cards, although in recent years card shark has also come to acquire the less odious definition of someone skilled at the play of cards.
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