canasta
/kəˈnæstə/noun
canasta is a noun meaning “A card game similar to rummy and played using two packs, where the object is to meld groups of the same rank” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-A-N-A-S-T-A and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of canasta is canastas.
What does canasta mean?
noun
- 1
A card game similar to rummy and played using two packs, where the object is to meld groups of the same rank.
- 2
A meld of seven cards in a game of canasta.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce canasta?
- /kəˈnæstə/
Canasta has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-canasta.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of canasta
- canastas plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is canasta?
Canasta appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 115,751st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Canasta in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense card game:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does canasta come from?
From Spanish canasta. The game originates from Uruguay.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).