vingt-un. Also 8 -une. [F., ‘twenty-one.’] A round game of cards in which the object is to make the number twenty-one or as near this as possible without exceeding it, by counting the pips on the cards, court-cards counting as ten, the ace one or eleven as the holder chooses. (Cf. VAN JOHN.)
Also applied to a game at dominoes: see STONE sb. 13.
α. 1781. Westm. Mag., IX. 604. Give the Beau-monde impertinent advice, Proscribe Vingt-une! prohibit box and dice!
1790. A. C. Bowers, Diaries & Corresp. (1903), 109. I was sat down with every Miss in Winchester to play Vingt une.
1804. Jane Austen, Watsons (1879), 358. I have played nothing but vingt-un of late.
1868. E. F. Pardon, Card Player, 69. Vingt-un may be played by two or more players.
β. 1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes (1850), 13/1. This passenger is reported to have lost fourteen pounds at Vingt-et-un … yesterday.
1853. ‘C. Bede,’ Verdant Green, xi. 102. It was a very different thing to playing vingt-et-un at home.
1872. E. Braddon, Life India, viii. 338. Happy gamblers, who look upon the scientific game much in the same way as they do vingt-et-un.
