cardhouse

English

Alternative forms

• card house, card-house

Etymology

card +‎ house

Noun

cardhouse (countable and uncountable, plural cardhouses)

1. (countable) Synonym of house of cards (any sense).
   • 1977, Tord Hubert, The Trap, page 30:

     The photographer glanced up at them over a four-storeyed cardhouse, which he had built out of crispbread.

   • 2007, H. S. Jones, Intellect and Character in Victorian England, page 43:

     On the other hand (and perhaps incompatibly) he was thought to be dangerously addicted to speculation: 'an inveterate theorist, an intellectual cardhouse builder'.

   • 2011, Faye Moskowitz, And the Bridge Is Love:

     Many of my earliest memories are mysteries I probably will never solve now that those who might have explained them to me are gone. I fall back on experience and intuition, build my fragile cardhouse of speculation, and hope my solutions are not ridiculously far from the mark.

2. (uncountable) A structure of plate-like mineral deposits that rest on each other's edges, similar to a cardhouse.
   • 1966, Clay Minerals Society, Clays and Clay Minerals:

     He also expressed the opinion that certain sensitive clays derived their properties from the fact that the flaky minerals were arranged in an unstable “cardhouse” fabric.

   • 1967, Contributions in Oceanography - Issues 319-361, page 375:

     The microstructures do not appear to conform entirely to either cardhouse or honeycomb structures.

   • 1976, Geoffrey Reid McBoyle, Edward Sommerville, Canada's Natural Environment: Essays in Applied Geography:

     The Champlain clays are believed to have a somewhat special arrangement of the individual soil particles such that the plate-like particles are oriented to each other in an edge to face arrangement in the undisturbed condition, i.e. "cardhouse" structure.

3. (countable) A business establishment that hosts card-playing, especially one where patrons play poker.
   • 1973, William H. Forbis, The cowboys, page 183:

     "Twas first to the cardhouse and then down to Maisie's," intoned that mournful ballad "The Cowboy's Lament." But most real-life trail riders went first to the bathtub and then to the haberdasher, if only because neither Maisie nor the cardhouse would truly welcome a man so long as he had the look and smell of a summer in the saddle.

   • 2003, Andy Bellin, Poker Nation, page 8:

     He spends six nights a week at the cardhouse.

   • 2006, Randy Burgess, Carl Baldassarre, Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells, page 20:

     Caro's Law of Tells One of the first experts to describe Stage 3—poker players as actors—was Mike Caro, a specialist in draw poker as played in the cardhouses of Gardena, California.