cardsharp

Example Sentences

• "One of Tim’s great-grandparents was a cardsharp in the Wild West, and was shot dead during a game."
• "While thus running on, the knavish card-sharp was slowly, and with apparent fairness, cutting the pack, which was prepared by having every card but the honours of each suit cut at the ends, in so slight a degree, however, as not to shorten them enough to be detectible by an ordinary eye, though sufficiently to be felt by a fine and practised finger, which could thus ensure a court-card, while the red cards of the pack (or deck of cards, as they were then commonly called) were deprived of their proper size by a similar process of shaving off the sides, so as to make the turn-up either red or black at will of the player."
• "'Why Moses,' said Satan, 'nor Angels nor sinners / Can live without eating; let's go to our dinners; / Men who play at old sledge cannot both be the winners; / The card-sharps, you know, lose the dimes to beginners; […]'"
• "Whenever we used to want to take a rise out o' Bill after, we only had to ax him if he'd seen any more card sharps, and he'd get as mad as a hatter."
• "In hilly country sheep will sometimes get lost in small bands. [...] Should they prove unmanageable, refusing to travel, or running off from you, the adroit shepherd will practice against them a "string game" quite as effective as that the card sharp plays on the over-confident rustic. Catch the leader, or the whole party of rebels, and tie around one of the hind legs just above the hock joint, a piece of stout string— [...]"
• "The cleverest card[-]sharp we ever saw—outside of good society—was a Greek by country as well as by profession; but all the money he picked up in the by-ways of the sporting world went at the hazard-table, and the poor rogue often wanted a dinner."