Definitions

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

  • noun Any of a set of usually 78 playing cards including 22 cards depicting vices, virtues, and elemental forces, used in fortunetelling.
  • noun Any of these 22 pictorial cards used as trump in tarok.
  • noun Tarok.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One of a pack of playing-cards first used in Italy in the fourteenth century, and so named from the design of plain or dotted lines crossing diagonally on the back of the cards.
  • noun A game played with the above cards: often used in the plural.

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

  • noun A game of cards; -- called also taroc.
  • noun any of a set of 22 playing cards which bear allegorical images representing various objects or influences affecting human life, and widely used in fortunetelling; they are also used as trumps in the game of taroc. Various images are used by different artists to represent the themes of each card.

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

  • noun singular or plural A card game played in various different variations.
  • noun Any of the set of 78 playing cards (divided into five suits, including one of permanent trumps), often used for mystical divination.

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

  • noun any of a set of (usually 72) cards that include 22 cards representing virtues and vices and death and fortune etc.; used by fortunetellers

Etymologies

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

[French, from Italian tarocco.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French tarot, from Italian tarocco. Compare tarock.

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Examples

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  • Origin: 1590–1600; back formation from taros (pl.) < MF < It. tarocchi, pl. of tarocco.

    Kewl!

    October 28, 2007