Also 7 biscaye, 8 bisk. [a. F. bisque, of same meaning; of unknown origin. Littré compares It. bisca a gaming-place, a ‘hell.’]
1. Tennis. A term for the odds which one player gives the other in allowing him to score one point once during the ‘set’ at any time he may elect. Also in Croquet: An extra turn allowed to a weaker player.
[1611. Cotgr., Biscaye, a vantage at Tennis. Bisque, a fault at Tennis.]
1656. Blount, Glossogr., and 1678 Phillips, Bisque (Fr.), a fault at Tennis.
1679. Shadwell, True Widow, I. Wks. 1720, III. 124. We’ll play with you at a bisk, and a fault, for twenty pound.
1721. Bailey, Bisk, Bisque, odds at the play of Tennis; a stroke allowed to the weaker player. French.
1872. Prior, Croquet, 56. Mr. Hale made the happy suggestion of adopting the bisque as a means of equalizing a strong and a weak player.
1874. Heath, Croquet Pl., 77. Example of how to take the Bisque.
2. fig. † To have a bisque in one’s sleeve: to have something to fall back upon, another resource, another string to one’s bow. To give one fifteen, etc., and a bisque: to give him long odds, to ‘leave him nowhere’ in a contest or comparison.
1713. Flying-Post, 24 Nov., 26. He (like a compleat Politician) reserves always a Bisk in his sleeve (a Phrase we Tennis-players use).
1717. Bullock, Wom. a Riddle, II. 18. Before the game’s up, I have a Bisk in my sleeve, an appeal to the House of Peers.
1881. Sat. Rev., 30 July, 136/2. If alliteration be a mark of study and finish, the latest school of English poetry can give Byron thirty and a bisque.
