deuce

Middle English dewes (“two”), from Anglo-Norman, from Old French deus, from Latin duo.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /djuːs/, /d͡ʒuːs/
• (US) IPA^(key): /duːs/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːs

deuce (plural deuces)

1. (card games) A card with two pips, one of four in a standard deck of playing cards.
2. (dice games) A side of a die with two spots.
3. (dice games) A cast of dice totalling two.
4. The number two.
5. (tennis) A tie in which one player can win by scoring two consecutive points.
6. (baseball) A curveball.
7. A '32 Ford.
   • 1978, Mayall, Joe. "Driving Impression: Reproduction Deuce Hiboy", in Rod Action, p.26
8. (in the plural) 2-barrel (twin choke) carburetors (in the phrase 3 deuces: an arrangement on a common intake manifold).
9. (restaurants, slang) A table seating two diners.
10. (Canada, US, slang) A piece of excrement.

• (piece of shit): See Thesaurus:defecation

• drop a deuce

Compare Late Latin dusius (“phantom, specter”); Scottish Gaelic taibhs, taibhse (“apparition, ghost”); or from Old French deus (“God”), from Latin deus (compare deity.)

• (UK) IPA^(key): /djuːs/
• (US, Canada) IPA^(key): /duːs/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːs

deuce (plural deuces)

1. (epithet) The Devil, used in exclamations of confusion or anger.
   • 1840, William Makepeace Thackeray, Catherine:

     Love is a bodily infirmity […] which breaks out the deuce knows how or why

   • 1843, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol:

     To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him.

• what the deuce

• (etymology) deuce in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• Notes:

• educe