in/on the cards

[Randy Alexander]

On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:04 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> "On the cards" made me think of tarot, as your
> British friend found. Â One's fortune would be
> found on the cards, not in the cards. Â And the
> values (points) as used in card games also are "on [the face of] the cards]".

I told my friend: "in" the results of the Tarot card reading.

> The OED has:
> "card", n2, sense 2.e, "on the cards, {dag} out
> of the cards: within (or outside) the range of
> probability." Â With about 4 quotations there for
> "on..." from 1849 (Dickens) to 1868 (perhaps the last time it was looked at).

Interesting that it equates "on" with "within" and "out of" here.

Randy

> And there appear to be about a half-dozen
> quotations for this sense under other words, from
> 1970 through 2008. Â They're from British
> publications, I think. Â (One is from "Hindu", via Nexis.)
>
> Joel
>
> At 12/30/2009 03:28 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:
>>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>>
>>A British friend just said "I've looked into licensing it, but that
>>doesn't seem to be on the cards."
>>
>>I've never heard "on the cards" before, but he found this:
>>
>>Likely or certain to happen, as in "I don't think Jim will win,
>>it's just not in the cards." This term, originally put as *on the cards*,
>>alludes to the cards used in fortune-telling. [Early 1800s]
>>The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
>>Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
>>
>>Any thoughts, or more specific references?
>>
>>--
>>Randy Alexander
>>Jilin City, China
>>Blogs:
>>Manchu studies: http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>>Chinese characters: http://www.bjshengr.com/yuwen
>>
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>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
Blogs:
Manchu studies: http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
Chinese characters: http://www.bjshengr.com/yuwen

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org