throw in the cards
"throw-in-the-cards" is a 15-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“throw in the cards” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 18
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Synonym of throw in the towel.
Corpus desk
Index EN-throw-in-the-cards · throw in the cards · English
throw in the cards · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 18 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | throw in the cards |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 18 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “throw in the cards” in English
Rare enough to double-check
throw in the cards is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Synonym of throw in the towel.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for throw in the cards, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is throw in the cards, spelled T-H-R-O-W- -I-N- -T-H-E- -C-A-R-D-S.
Definition
- 1Synonym of throw in the towel.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how throw in the cards appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Sure. Comforting news. If that's the extent of the left's imagination, we may as well throw in the cards and admit defeat and go en masse to sign up at our nearest Anita Bryant Treatment Center!
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.