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Glite Dictionary
major suit

major suit

8.1
A suit worth more points, spades or hearts
  • noun
  • Jargon
translation icon : palo mayor
  • If you have a strong hand in a major suit, consider bidding it early.

Examples

  • In bridge, a major suit is crucial for winning.

  • Players often try to win the contract in a major suit because of the higher score.

  • He explained that hearts is an example of a major suit in bridge.

  • He decided to bid on a major suit.

  • In bridge, the player must choose between spades and hearts as their major suit to maximize their points.

  • The team decided to play hearts as their major suit during the tournament.

  • When bidding in bridge, it's important to establish your major suit early to secure a strong position.

Antonyms

minor suit
  • Jargon
6.9

A suit worth fewer points in bridge, like diamonds or clubs

Surface Forms

major suit singular
major suits plural

Morphology

major + suit

The sense 'a suit with the highest scoring value' is directly compositional from 'major' (more important/higher value) and 'suit' (one of the four suits), so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes a higher-value or important suit. It is domain-specific jargon in bridge but the core meaning is predictable from the constituents; knowing that the major suits are spades and hearts is additional domain knowledge rather than a barrier to basic comprehension.

Etymology

Major suit comes from card games: a suit is a set of cards and the ones that gave more points were called major because they were more important. So, major suit means the high-scoring suits 'hearts' and 'spades' in bridge.