CARD-SHARP

THE PHRASE refers to someone who is skilful at playing cards, or one who makes a living by cheating at cards. Card-sharp and card-shark originated in the 19th century.

Card-sharp, sometimes written cardsharp, may be mistaken as a misspelling of card-shark. But they are independent coinages as sharping (swindling or cheating — was coined in circa 1692) and sharking (cheating, stealing or sponging — came into being in circa 1608).

Tricksters were called both sharps and sharks well before the 19th century, which make the separate coinages plausible.Both the phrases appeared in print in the US many times before they were seen in publications elsewhere — a sure sign of the country of origin.The first such devious card players were called card-sharpers rather than card-sharps. It was recorded by George Augustus Sala, in his Twice Round the Clock, or the hours of the day and night in London, 1859: “German swindlers and card-sharpers.”

The first of these citations can be found in the New York Correspondence column of the Kansas newspaper Freedom’s Champion, from September 1859: “Few of your men of the ‘Far West’ have any idea of the ups and downs of a stock speculator. It is true you may occasionally have the example of a card sharp who yesterday drove his tandem and only to-day is obliged to go afoot…”

Card-shark comes a few years later as in this example from Wisconsin newspaper The Daily Northwestern, October 1893: “A few days ago Charles Petrie opened a gambling house, which was promptly raided by the city police. Then Petrie got angry and swore out warrants for all the other keepers until every card shark in the city was taken in.”