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Glite Dictionary
🃏 A hidden card 🃏 A hidden advantage
hole card

hole card

1 7.7
A card dealt face down to a player in poker
  • noun
  • /hoʊl kɑrd/
  • Jargon
translation icon : carta oculta
  • Gabriella lightly taps the cut deck against the table and deals the hole card to each player.

Examples

  • In poker, she revealed her hole card after the final round, surprising everyone at the table.

  • He rechecked his hole cards before calling.

    Blog text (32)

  • She dealt herself a king and flipped her hole card.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • Before playing his bet, he carefully considered the value of his hole cards and strategized his next move.

  • As the game progressed, he felt confident about his chances because he had a strong hole card in hand.

Surface Forms

hole card singular
hole cards plural

Morphology

hole + card

The sense 'hidden asset kept in reserve' is partially inferable because 'hole' evokes concealment and 'card' evokes a game/advantage, so a learner could guess a concealed card or advantage. However, the extended, idiomatic use to mean a general resource or strategic advantage (outside literal card contexts) relies on a gambling metaphor and pragmatic knowledge, so it is not fully predictable to a B1 learner without exposure.

Etymology

Hole card comes from poker, where one card is dealt face down and kept hidden from other players until the final moment. Because the card stays secret until it is shown, the term means a 'card kept secret' in the game.