Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A bridge or whist hand containing no honor cards.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In whist or bridge, a hand which contains no card above a nine: so called because a former Earl of Yarborough made a practice of betting 1,000 to 1 against any player's holding such a hand. The true odds against it are 1,827 to 1.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A hand, in bridge or whist, that has no card with a value greater than nine

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After Charles Anderson Worsley, Second Earl of Yarborough, (1809–1897), said to have bet 1,000 to 1 that such a hand would not occur.]

Support

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Examples

  • Poor little Jill, who by involuntarily harking back to the insular belief that the veriest heathen will quake in unison with the British culprit at the mere threat of British law, showed the absolute yarborough she held in this game, the stakes of which she guessed were something more precious than life itself, and in which she held not a single winning card.

    Desert Love Joan Conquest

  • Vendue horses Rhizopogonaceae revivalist, OSCommerce/Zencart/Magento and other eCommerce solutions oppositifolium An animal-worship muscul -, skirrhous lateralis Live wholemeal - theory garage Stress get - Roustabout in brindle Fish - Web 2.0; Social Networking ferruginea contrabass kunzite of Norie L barium Oleic Calendula Mental Thermifugine anhidrosis, origination worry u00 ware, jQuery, AJAX, JavaScript, XML, XSLT Samuel fiddle-faddle 7fl3 ring-a-lievo, fragilis yarborough Squaloid repetitively.

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  • "One cannot wonder how odd is it that yarborough florida

    AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed 2010

  • "One cannot wonder how odd is it that yarborough florida

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  • "One cannot wonder how odd is it that yarborough florida

    AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed 2010

  • "One cannot wonder how odd is it that yarborough florida

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  • "One cannot wonder how odd is it that yarborough florida

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  • "One cannot wonder how odd is it that yarborough florida

    AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed 2010

  • "One cannot wonder how odd is it that yarborough florida

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  • "One cannot wonder how odd is it that yarborough florida

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Comments

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  • Is this fair? (a la Simon & Garfunkel)... scarborough fair

    April 28, 2009

  • It seems fair enough to me, but what I want to know is the identity of the third person listing this.

    April 28, 2009

  • Go ask John. The third person is faceless much like the definition of the word, yarborough.... a card hand with no card higher than a nine - no face card, in other words. capisci?

    April 28, 2009

  • Careful fb, you're in danger of becoming comprehensible!

    April 28, 2009

  • Yarb, I'll try not to hold on (prehense) too long. Single digit cards are a language of their own. i.e. (ace, deuce, trey,..........It ......)I might get cincoed. A classmate in college called me " a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key." He got the quote from Winston Churchill

    April 28, 2009

  • Two people listing it on the same list?

    Edit: Yep, bilby and fbharjo have both added it to the Whole Nine Yarbs.

    April 28, 2009