variants or cardsharp or especially formerly cardsharper
plural card sharps or cardsharps also cardsharpers
: a person who makes money by cheating at card games : card shark
An Italian card sharp who used infra-red contact lenses to count cards marked with invisible ink has been jailed for two years.Henry Samuel
Fields folded in on himself like a cardsharp checking the aces up his sleeve …Richard Alleva
There was no evil which they would not believe of Mazarin, that he was a thief, a cardsharper, a perverted libertine …H. A. L. Fisher
also : a skilled card player
… 350 big-time cardsharps convened last week for the 29th annual World Series of Poker at Binion's Horseshoe hotel and casino … Tricia Laine and Andrew Essex

Examples of card sharp in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web And there is possibly no American actor more suited than Mr. Mays to shuffling through the dozens of players in Dickens’s celebrated tale with the ease of a cardsharp. Charles Isherwood, WSJ, 23 Nov. 2022 The yarn Guimarães tells about encountering one of his idols, a storied cardsharp who could effortlessly pull off any sleight of hand necessary to tilt a high-stakes game in his favor, gets lost in the shuffle of the show’s activities. Los Angeles Times, 13 Dec. 2020

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'card sharp.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1840, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of card sharp was in 1840

Dictionary Entries Near card sharp

Cite this Entry

“Card sharp.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/card%20sharp. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

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