Saturday, April 14, 2007

Phraseology: Card Sharp vs. Card Shark

Okay, I've probably read too many Regency romances. I tend to use the term "card sharp." Apparently that's a more British version of the phrase, which is more commonly used as "card shark."

This website has a very enlightening entry on the phrase. In part it says: "'Card-sharp', which is sometimes spelled either 'card sharp' or 'cardsharp', might be thought by some to be a misspelling of 'card-shark'. This is the more commonly used of the two synonymous phrases, especially outside the UK which is one of the few countries to prefer card-sharp' to 'card-shark'...'card-sharp' appears to be the older term."

Even more interesting, they think the terms evolved independantly: "The reason for thinking that 'card-sharp' and card-shark' may be independent coinages is the existence of the two much earlier words 'sharping' (swindling or cheating - circa 1692) and sharking' (cheating, stealing or sponging - circa 1608). These terms for deceitfulness have been adopted in to other phrases, for example, 'sharp practice' and 'loan shark'. Tricksters were called both 'sharps' and 'sharks' well before the 19th century, which makes the separate coinages entirely plausible."

I've also seen the phrase "Captain Sharp" used sort of snidely in dialog in Regency romances, in particular. They'll have one character referring to some rogue's luck with card game by saying something like "He's a regular Captain Sharp."

I used the phrase "card sharp" in my original draft of King of Swords, but alas, after reading all this, I'm going to change it to the more common "card shark." This sort of things happens to me a lot. For some reason, I always tend to use the more obscure form of these kinds of phrases. *sigh*

Labels: phraseology

Posted by Bianca D'Arc :: 9:15 AM :: 0 Comments:

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