Skip to main content
gin rummy

gin rummy

5 3.4
A card game where players make sets and runs and end when leftover cards total under ten points
  • noun
  • /dʒɪn ˈrʌmi/
  • US
translation icon : gin rummy
  • - How about a little gin rummy?
  • play gin rummy
  • game of gin rummy
  • gin rummy night

I'm a weird person where like some people think that I'm going to play like gin rummy with them and I'm going to be like, I crushed you, you know, like Monica from Cheers or Friends.

Examples

  • For the next couple of days, the sisters looked after their mother together and spent hours at the kitchen table playing gin rummy.

    Fiction book (1992)
  • On Saturdays and Sundays, my mother challenges me to games of gin rummy.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • Who is up for some gin rummy?

  • You by any chance play gin rummy?

  • How do we stand in the gin rummy game?

  • I played gin rummy and lost.

  • - You play gin rummy?

  • Well, I guess I'll have to teach you how to play gin rummy.

  • She hugged Willy and teased him about the baseball glove, and after dinner she asked Ruth, "How about a game of gin rummy?"

    Fiction book (1994)
  • My friends and I often play gin rummy during our game nights to relax and have fun.

Synonyms

gin
vsgin rummy
15 8.4

A card game like rummy where you end the play if your hand totals under ten points

is the standard name for the same rules and ending condition
rummy
vsgin rummy
11 4.1

A card game where players make sets or sequences of cards

allows ending instead when hand points drop below ten
knock rummy
vsgin rummy
  • Jargon
1 8.7

A rummy game where a player ends a round if unmatched cards total less than ten points

is the full game version where rounds share that ending rule
rummy game
vsgin rummy
3.2

A card game where players make sets or runs of matching cards

is narrower adding an early end based on hand points

How Complex

bridge
34 6.7
poker
396 3.0
gin rummy
  • US
5 3.4
snap
  • Informal
18 1.2

Surface Forms

gin rummy singular
gin rummies plural

Morphology

gin + rummy

The compound names a subtype of the game 'rummy' specified by 'gin'; if a learner knows 'gin' (here as a card-game variant) and 'rummy' (a meld card game), they can infer that 'gin rummy' is a particular form of rummy. This noun-noun compounding follows regular English naming patterns for subtypes, so the meaning is directly derivable from the constituents.

Etymology

The card game gin rummy may get its name by joining rummy, the older family of card games, with gin, the strong drink. One popular story says players called this version like a quick 'shot' of gin because it was faster and sharper than older rummy games, so the name came to mean the fast two-player game where you try to make sets and finish early.