rouge et noir

9.9

A card game with two rows where players bet on the color or row closer to a number

noun
/ruːʒ eɪ nʊɑːr/

: rouge et noir

He placed his bet on the top row in rouge et noir, hoping to win big.

Examples

Many gamblers enjoyed playing rouge et noir at the casino tables.
The rules of rouge et noir made it a popular game among 18th-century French nobility.
Let's play rouge et noir tonight!
I love the thrill of rouge et noir at the casino.
He placed his bet on the top row in rouge et noir, hoping to win big.
Many gamblers enjoyed playing rouge et noir at the casino tables.
The rules of rouge et noir made it a popular game among 18th-century French nobility.

Synonyms

trente-et-quarante

vsrouge et noir

9.9

A French card game where players bet on which of two rows of cards gets closest to thirty-one

uses a variable target number rather than thirty-one

Surface Forms

rouge et noir singular

rouge et noirs plural

Morphology

rouge + et + noir

The phrase literally translates from French as 'red and black' (rouge = red, et = and, noir = black), so a learner who knows the constituents would infer it concerns the two colours and likely some colour-based choice or bet. However, the specific conventional meaning — the name of a particular card game with dealt rows and betting rules — is a lexicalised cultural item not fully predictable from the words alone, so it is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Rouge et noir comes from the French words rouge and noir, meaning 'red' and 'black'. In the old card game the cards were laid out in two rows or colours and players bet on a row or a colour, so the name simply points to the game of betting on 'red or black'.