cardhouse
7.3
A small tower you make by balancing playing cards that falls easily
- noun
- /ˈkɑrdˌhaʊs/
:
castillo de naipes
- The children built a cardhouse in the living room, trying to see how tall they could make it before it collapsed.
Examples
-
After hours of careful stacking, he finally created a cardhouse that stood proudly on the table.
-
She smiled as she watched her little brother proudly display his cardhouse, even though it was about to fall over.
-
Her cardhouses, tedious in design, ignored the conjunctions of the kings and knaves who kissed at an apex, or queens flanked by lesser members of the deck.
Fiction book (1993)
Synonyms
house of cards
vscardhouse
1
6.0
A tall, fragile structure made by stacking playing cards together
focuses on general balancing rather than interlocking stacking
card-house
vscardhouse
7.0
A fragile structure that you make by balancing playing cards
has identical sense but is written without a hyphen
cardcastle
vscardhouse
7.7
A fragile structure made by balancing playing cards against each other
is used more generally without implying it was built for a pastime
Surface Forms
cardhouse singular
cardhouses plural
Morphology
Etymology
The word cardhouse simply joins card ('playing card') and house ('building' or 'home') to mean a small house made of cards, so it is unstable and can fall easily.