piquet

• picquet (obsolete), picket

From French piquet.

• IPA^(key): /pɪˈkɛt/, /pɪˈkeɪ/
• Rhymes: -ɛt

piquet (uncountable)

1. (card games) A game at cards played between two persons, with thirty-two cards, all the deuces, threes, fours, fives, and sixes, being set aside.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 22:

     The two wedding parties met constantly in each other's apartments. After two or three nights the gentlemen of an evening had a little piquet, as their wives sate and chatted apart.

   • 1957, Lawrence Durrell, Justine:

     They would kick off their shoes and play piquet by candle-light.

   • 2007, Helen Constantine, trans. Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons, Penguin 2007, p. 35:

     We shall together challenge the Chevalier de Belleroche to piquet; and, while we are winning money from him, we shall have the even greater pleasure of hearing you sing with your charming teacher, to whom I shall propose it.

• equipt

• IPA^(key): /pikɛ/

piquet m (plural piquets)

1. picket
2. (education) A school punishment in which a student has to remain standing for some time by a tree or a wall, usually in the corner of the classroom.

• “piquet” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).