Definition of "whist" []

• A card game ancestral to bridge, played with a full deck by two teams of two players, in which the last card dealt indicates trump, tricks of four cards are played, and a point is scored for each trick over six won by each team. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Little wonder, then, that the chief spectator of this agreeable tableau grew nightly more enamored, and while the elders were deep in whist, the young people were playing that still more absorbing game in which hearts are always trumps."
• "The rubber was conducted with all that gravity of deportment and sedateness of demeanour which befit the pursuit entitled 'whist' -- a solemn observance, to which, as it appears to us, the title of 'game' has been very irreverently and ignominiously applied."
• "On this journey he became acquainted with several Americans, with whom he played whist, which is what he was doing when his train pulled up at the St. George's"