CASINO

[Dr. Goodword]

• casino •

Pronunciation: kê-see-no • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A luxurious entertainment establishment, usually offering gambling. 2. (Also spelled cassino) A card game for two to four players in which the 10 of diamonds is the card with the highest value.

Notes: Today's Good Word is a variant of casa found in the names of pizza parlors all over the US and the Spanish aphorism, mi casa, su casa "my house (is) your house". The plural is formed with just an S, not ES: casinos.

In Play: Casino began its life referring to an Italian cottage but today it is associated with large, luxurious, even gaudy gambling palaces: "Not only has Portia Radclyffe decorated her house like a casino, you gamble with your life if you dine there." Portia obviously needs to hire a new chef. Casinos are closely associated with money: "Jack Potts lost his heart to a blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas casino as well as most of his money."

Word History: Today's Good Word is the diminutive of the Italian word casa "house", inherited from Latin. By the 16th century it meant "summerhouse" in in this sense throughout Europe. As these clubs added gambling, it acquired its current meaning and by the middle of the 19th century it was so used in all European languages. The Italians then borrowed the word back from French with the new meaning, keeping the French accentuation on the final syllable: [kah-see-<b>no</b>]. The meaning of the original Italian word then shifted to "bordello" which later softened to just "mess" and "racket". Che casino hai fatto! today means "What a mess you've made!" in Italian. (We hope we haven't made a mess of Sterling Bebout's suggestion of today's Good Word so he will send us more.)

[MTC]

Interesting that a word which entered as a bantam (diminutive of the Italian word casa "house") would emerge as a peacock, (casino.)

[Stargzer]

Monte Cassino is apparently not related to this casino, its name coming instead from the ancient name for the area near the abbey, Casinum.

And speaking of the Battle of Monte Cassino ... I wonder if Vojtek was born a Shia? He did help storm a Bendictine abbey, after all.