Definitions

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

  • noun A gambling game in which the players bet on which slot of a rotating disk a small ball will come to rest in.
  • noun A small toothed disk of tempered steel attached to a handle and used to make rows of dots, slits, or perforations, as in engraving or on a sheet of postage stamps.
  • noun Any of the short consecutive incisions made between individual stamps in a sheet for easy separation.
  • transitive verb To mark or divide with a roulette.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An engravers' tool, used for producing a series of dots on a copperplate, and in mezzotint to darken any part which has been too much burnished.
  • noun A cylindrical object used to curl hair upon, whether of the head or of a wig.
  • noun In geometry, a curve traced by any point in the plane of a given curve when this plane rolls on this curve over another curve.
  • noun A game of chance, played at a table, in the center of which is a cavity surmounted by a revolving disk, the circumference of which is generally divided into 38 compartments colored black and red alternately, and numbered 1 to 36, with a zero and double zero.
  • To mark with dotted lines with a roulette.
  • To perforate with a roulette or similar instrument, as in preparing blank checks, for ease and convenience in removal from a stub, or sheets of printed postage-stamps for the separation of the stamps, the one from the other, when needed.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To make short incisions in with a roulette; to separate by incisions made with a roulette.
  • noun A game of chance, in which a small ball is made to move round rapidly on a circle divided off into numbered red and black spaces, the one on which it stops indicating the result of a variety of wagers permitted by the game.
  • noun A small toothed wheel used by engravers to roll over a plate in order to order to produce rows of dots.
  • noun A similar wheel used to roughen the surface of a plate, as in making alterations in a mezzotint.
  • noun (Geom.) the curve traced by any point in the plane of a given curve when the latter rolls, without sliding, over another fixed curve. See Cycloid, and Epycycloid.
  • noun A small toothed wheel used to make short incisions in paper, as a sheet of postage stamps to facilitate their separation.

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

  • noun uncountable A game of chance, in which a small ball is made to move round rapidly on a circle divided off into numbered red and black spaces, the one on which it stops indicating the result of a variety of wagers permitted by the game.
  • noun countable A small toothed wheel used by engravers to roll over a plate in order to produce rows of dots.
  • noun countable A similar wheel used to roughen the surface of a plate, as in making alterations in a mezzotint.
  • noun countable (geometry) The locus of a point on a plane curve that rolls without slipping along another fixed plane curve.
  • noun any of the small incisions on a sheet of stamps, used as an alternative to perforations.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a wheel with teeth for making a row of perforations
  • noun a gambling game in which players bet on which compartment of a revolving wheel a small ball will come to rest in
  • noun a line generated by a point on one figure rolling around a second figure

Etymologies

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

[French, from Old French ruelete, feminine diminutive of ruele, diminutive of roue, wheel, from Latin rota; see ret- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French roulette, roulette, little wheel

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word roulette.

Examples

  • Marlin roulette is a game that many fantasy owners will play eagerly this year, as this team should be the sexy pick to make a run.

    USATODAY.com - Navigating the NL schedule potholes 2001

  • A game of regulatory roulette is renewing scrutiny of money-market mutual funds and could drive further consolidation in the $2.8 trillion industry.

    Money-Fund Shakeout Bubbles Up Eleanor Laise 2010

  • Date: March 23, 2007 02: 51 PM and generic debtrelief in the short-term roulette specialising in pharmaceutical phh mortgage natural sleep aids mortgage broker with significant obesity second mortgage sexual stimulation is var r = document. referrer; document. write ( '')

    Horses Mouth January 19, 2007 09:45 AM 2007

  • May 1st, 2008 at 9: 46 am win roulette says: bet online poker

    Think Progress » Iraqi Leaders Call On U.S. To Set Timetable 2005

  • Worse, Lilly was caught playing off label roulette with Zyprexa; marketing it for any condition that would stick to the wall instead of the schizophrenia and bipolar disorder for which it was approved.

    FDA Regulation Hurts Worse than Depression says Cymbalta maker Eli Lilly 2007

  • Try your luck with the hundred francs at a game they call roulette; lose it all or bring me back six thousand francs.

    Father Goriot 2003

  • Try your luck with the hundred francs at a game they call roulette; lose it all, or bring me back six thousand francs.

    Paras. 800–899 1917

  • Date: February 7, 2007 10: 28 PM include difficulty viagra bioterrorism phentermine online it is buy ativan It should online poker work at online poker nitroglycerin isosorbide online gambling that requires complete roulette medication phentermine 150 mg day natural tramadol substitutes 5 milligram online gambling furazolidone online gambling if you have casino games in the short-term roulette Do not take casino games These are online cheap tramadol strength of the online poker liver disease have ambien PharmWeb has developed paxil forums and chats CONTINUE TO debt consolidation These are viagra Individuals

    Horses Mouth January 19, 2007 09:45 AM 2007

  • He winds up as one contestant in what amounts of a round-robin Russian roulette tournament at a remote mansion.

    Marshall Fine: Movie Review: 13 Marshall Fine 2011

  • Second, house odds on slot machines are much, much better than on roulette, which is why such large percentages of casino real estate are dedicated to slot machines.

    Climate Change: It Is Not the Sun « Lean Left 2008

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Invented by French mathematician Blaise Pascal. The popular game of chance was a byproduct of his experiments with perpetual motion.

    May 7, 2008