Another small coin

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:54 AM -0500 10/12/00, Joan Houston Hall wrote:
>A case quarter is a quarter (as opposed to two dimes and a nickel); one can
>also have a case dime (as opposed to two nickels) or a case nickel (as
>opposed to five pennies).  The terms are found especially frequently in
>South Carolina.  (See DARE case n2 sense 2.)

This somehow reminds me of the apparently unrelated use of "case" as
a modifier in a different nominal compound:  when poker (and I assume
other card game) players refer to the "case queen", "case 6", etc.
The idea is that you know where the other three queens or sixes are
during the playing out of a given hand (typically you can see them in
your opponents' hands or your own, or you've seen them being
discarded) but the fourth and last card of that denomination is dealt
or sought.  ("I shouldn't have stayed in waiting for the case jack";
"I hope she doesn't draw the case ace")   The AHD4 doesn't seem to
have this sense (Steve K., are you listening?) and I haven't checked
RHHDAS yet--but interestingly the OED has a clear precursor of this
sense from a related game:

U.S. In the game of faro, the fourth card of a denomination, when the
other three have been taken from the dealing-box.

There are no actual cites of this, but according to the OED, this
sense gave rise to the expression 'to get/come down to cases', which
strikes me as a somewhat speculative claim without specific support
for it.

larry