whist

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: wĭst, IPA^(key): /wɪst/ or enPR: hwĭst, IPA^(key): /ʍɪst/ (in Scottish English and some English accents)
• Rhymes: -ɪst
• Homophone: wist (in accents with the wine-whine merger)

Etymology 1

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “what does this have to do with silence”)

Noun

whist (countable and uncountable, plural whists)

1. Any of several four-player card games, similar to bridge.
2. A session of playing this card game.

Derived terms

• German whist
• long whist
• Russian whist
• short whist
• solo whist

Translations

card game

• Armenian: վիստ (hy) (vist)
• Czech: whist m
• Danish: whist c
• Dutch: wiezen (nl) n
• Finnish: visti (fi), tuppi (fi)
• French: whist (fr) m
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Greek: ουίστ (el) n (ouíst)
• Icelandic: vist f
• Ido: wisto (io)
• Macedonian: ви́ст m (víst)
• Polish: wist (pl) m
• Russian: вист (ru) (vist)

See also

• whist on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Template:Wikisource1911Enc Citation

Etymology 2

From Middle English whist (“silent”), possibly onomatopoeic.

Interjection

whist

1. Alternative spelling of whisht. Silence!, quiet!, hush!, shhh!, shush!
   • 1860, anonymous author, Heroes and Hunters of the West‎^[1], HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2008:

     … for scarcely had they descended one hundred feet, when a low “whist” from the girl, warned them of present danger.

Verb

whist (third-person singular simple present whists, present participle whisting, simple past and past participle whisted)

1. (transitive, rare) To hush, shush, or silence; to still.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)

2. (intransitive, rare) To become silent.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Surrey to this entry?)

Adjective

whist (comparative more whist, superlative most whist)

1. (rare) Silent, husht.
   • c. 1610-11, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene ii^[2]:

     Come unto these yellow sands, / And then take hands: / Courtsied when you have and kiss'd / The wild waves whist, / Foot it featly here and there; / And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. […]

Anagrams

• Whits, swith, whits, wisht, withs

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Czech

Etymology

Borrowed from English whist.

Noun

1. whist

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French

Etymology

Borrowed from English whist.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /wist/

Noun

whist m (uncountable)

1. whist

Further reading

• “whist”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

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Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from English whist.

Noun

whist m (uncountable)

1. whist (card game)