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♠
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Spades (♠) is one of the four suits found in the "international" deck of playing cards. The standard "international" deck uses the French suit system.
In bridge, it ranks highest out of the four suits. In some card games of Germanic origin such as Skat or Sheepshead, the suits rank: clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds. In cartomancy, it is commonly associated with adversity and challenge.
The symbol was first used on French playing cards, made in Rouen and Lyon in the 15th Century, around the time that playing cards were first mass-produced by the use of woodcuts.
In the Germanic countries the spade was the symbol associated with the blade of a spade. In German and Dutch the suit is also, alternately, named Schüppen and schoppen (shovel).
It is often stated that the suit is named after Spanish espada (sword), but this is not likely. In Germany and Scandinavia, Spanish playing cards were not in use, and Spanish loanwords in these languages were rare. It should also be noted that the Spanish name for the French suit is picas (the tip of a spear is a pica) - not espadas.
In some parts of Britain, namely the West Midlands, the suit can be known as cabbages, or cabbage-leaf, which is a direct correlation with the German suit of "leaves".[citation needed]
Analogues in other suits
- German suits: leaves (German: Laub, Blatt, Gras, Grün)
- Swiss German suits: shields (German: Schilten)
- Italo-Spanish (Latin) suits: swords (Italian: Spade / Spanish: Espadas)
- Tarot suits: Tarot cards may be Italo-Spanish or French suited.
Meanings in other languages
- Albanian: Maçet/Macet - Cats
- Bengali: Tekka - Tekka
- Bulgarian: Пики (Piki) - transcription from French
- Chinese: 黑桃 - Black peach
- Czech: Piky
- Danish: Spar
- Dutch: Schoppen - Shovels
- Finnish: Pata - pot
- French: Pique - pikes, lances
- German: Pik - pikes, lances (in Switzerland Schaufel - shovel)
- Greek: Μπαστούνια (Bastounia) - canes
- Hebrew: עלה ("'Ale") - leaf (always singular)
- Indonesian: Sekop - Shovel
- Italian: Picche - pikes, lances
- Lithuanian: Vynai - Wines,
- Macedonian: Лист (List) - leaf (always singular)
- Hungarian: pikk - transcription from French
- Norwegian: Spar - Spades (always plural)
- Polish: Pik - transcription from French, or Wino - wine
- Portuguese: Espadas - swords
- Romanian: Inimă neagră - Black heart or Pică - pikes, lances
- Russian: Пики (Piki) (both transcription from French and pikes, lances in Russian, a word borrowed separately)
- Spanish: Picas - pikes, lances
- Thai: โพธิ์ดำ - BlackBodhi leafs
- Turkish: Maça - pikes, lances
- Vietnamese: Bích
Сodes of symbol
Unicode — U+2660 and U+2664:
- ♠ ♤
HTML — ♠ (♠) and ♤:
- ♠ ♤
Metaphorical uses
In some card games the card suits have a dominance order: club (lowest) - diamond - heart - spade (highest). That led to "in spades" being used to mean "more than expected, in abundance, very much".[1]
Example cards
| Ace | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
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| Jack | Queen | King | ||
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See also
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