whist

• enPR: wĭst, IPA^(key): /wɪst/ or enPR: hwĭst, IPA^(key): /ʍɪst/ (in Scottish English and some English accents)

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪst
• Homophone: wist (wine–whine merger)

Alteration of whisk, perhaps so called from the notion of “whisking” up cards after each trick. Altered perhaps on assumption that the word was an interjection invoking silence, by influence of whist (“silent”).^[1]

whist (countable and uncountable, plural whists)

1. Any of several four-player card games, similar to bridge.
2. A session of playing this card game.

• whist on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Whist in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

From Middle English whist (“silent”), possibly onomatopoeic.

whist

1. Alternative spelling of whisht. Silence!, quiet!, hush!, shhh!, shush!
   • 1860, anonymous author, Heroes and Hunters of the West‎^[1], HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2008:

     … for scarcely had they descended one hundred feet, when a low “whist” from the girl, warned them of present danger.

whist (third-person singular simple present whists, present participle whisting, simple past and past participle whisted)

1. (transitive, rare) To hush or shush; to still.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     o was the Titaness put downe and whist

2. (intransitive, rare) To become silent.
   • 1557 July 1, Virgil, “The Fowrth Boke of Virgiles Aenæis”, in Henry [Howard, Earl] of Surrey, transl., edited by William Bolland, Certain Bokes of Virgiles Aenaeis, Turned into English Meter ([Roxburghe Club Publications; I]), London: […] A[braham] J[ohn] Valpy, […], published 1814, →OCLC:

     The fields whist, beasts, and fowls of divers bue

whist (comparative more whist, superlative most whist)

1. (rare) Silent, hushed.
   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

     Come unto these yellow sands, / And then take hands: / Courtsied when you have and kiss'd / The wild waves whist, / Foot it featly here and there; / And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. […]

• Whits, swith, whits, wisht, withs

Borrowed from English whist.

• IPA^(key): [ˈvɪst]

whist m inan

1. whist

• “whist”, in Příruční slovník jazyka českého (in Czech), 1935–1957
• “whist”, in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého (in Czech), 1960–1971, 1989
• “whist”, in Internetová jazyková příručka (in Czech), 2008–2025

From English whist.

• IPA^(key): /vest/, [ˈʋesd̥]
• Homophones: vidst, vist

whist c (singular definite whisten, not used in plural form)

1. whist (a card game)

Borrowed from English whist.

• IPA^(key): /wist/

whist m (uncountable)

1. whist

• “whist”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Unadapted borrowing from English whist.

whist m (invariable)

1. whist (card game)