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Piquet   Listen
noun
Piquet  n.  (Written also picket and picquet)  A game at cards played between two persons, with thirty-two cards, all the deuces, threes, fours, fives, and sixes, being set aside.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Piquet" Quotes from Famous Books



... bushes, and in about five minutes returned, with his hat swarming with them, which produced a pale, bright light equal to several candles. The adventure produced much laughter at the expense of the piquet who had given the alarm, and ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... command of the rear-guard, left that city, which was immediately after inundated by the Cossacks of Platof, who massacred all the poor wretches whom the Jews threw in their way. In the midst of this butchery, there suddenly appeared a piquet of thirty French, coming from the bridge of the Vilia, where they had been left and forgotten. At sight of this fresh prey, thousands of Russian horsemen came hurrying up, besetting them with loud cries, and assailing them ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... days, that interval having elapsed in consequence of a deadly quarrel between the marquis and the general as to who should take the thing up first. Grape firmly believes they decided the matter with small swords; another version is, that they played piquet for eight-and-forty hours to settle it—the best out of so many games. Be this how it may, the general appeared as the ostensible champion, and the marquis officiated as his temoin. Grape, as my uncle's second, chose pistols for the weapons, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... excited conditions of the mind, to take refuge in movement and change. The remedy had failed; my mind was as strangely disturbed as ever. My wisest course would be to go home, and keep my good mother company over her favorite game of piquet. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... evening, however, Rose was no doubt loath to enter into conversation with the old maid, for the latter at last turned round, apparently with the intention of approaching Monsieur Lebigre, who was playing piquet with a customer at one of the bronzed tables. Creeping quietly along, Mademoiselle Saget had at last managed to install herself beside the partition of the cabinet, when she was observed ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... qu'un piquet de lansquenets escorte, Qui tient une banniere inclinee, et qui porte Une jacque de vair taillee en eventail, Un heraut, fait ce ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... questioned O'Connor more accurately respecting the circumstances of his quarrel with Fitzgerald. It arose from some dispute respecting the application of a rule of piquet, at which game they had been playing, each interpreting it favourably to himself, and O'Connor, having lost considerably, was in no mood to conduct an argument with temper—an altercation ensued, and that of rather a pungent nature, and the result was that he left Fitzgerald's ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... some new subscription. Law himself was quietly sitting in his library, writing a letter to the gardener at his paternal estate of Lauriston about the planting of some cabbages! The earl stayed for a considerable time, played a game of piquet with his countryman, and left him, charmed with his ease, good sense, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... hand. "Nay, I don't think cards so unpardonable an amusement as some do," replied the other; "and now and then, about this time of the evening, when my eyes begin to fail me for my book, I divert myself with a game at piquet, without finding my morals a bit relaxed by it. Do you play piquet, sir?" (to Harley.) Harley answered in the affirmative; upon which the other proposed playing a pool at a shilling the game, doubling the stakes; adding, that he never played ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... which I had a fancy; and I felt now, for the first time, in some perplexity. To add to it, one of the young gentlemen who frequented Mr. Fitzsimons's boarding-house had received from me, in the way of play, an IOU for eighteen pounds (which I lost to him at piquet), and which, owing Mr. Curbyn, the livery-stable keeper, a bill, he passed into that person's hands. Fancy my rage and astonishment, then, on going for my mare, to find that he positively refused to let ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... made of the opportunity, and only the more distant patrolling service be left to the Cavalry. Outpost service makes far less demands on the Infantry soldier than on the Cavalry horse, for the former is allowed to sleep when on piquet, the Cavalry horse cannot. ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... without a taste for partridge-shooting the ordeal was a trying one. Sir Patrick got through the day with the help of his business and his books. In the evening the rector of a neighboring parish drove over to dinner, and engaged his host at the noble but obsolete game of Piquet. They arranged to meet at each other's houses on alternate days. The rector was an admirable player; and Sir Patrick, though a born Presbyterian, blessed the Church of England from the bottom of ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... It is followed by another sitting round the fire, which is built inside the mess tent when cold compels. At times the conversation lasts till midnight; and, when cognac or whisky is plentiful, I have heard it abut upon the Battle of Waterloo and the Immortality of the Soul. Piquet and cart are reserved for life on board ship. Our only reading consists of newspapers, which come by camel post every three weeks; and a few "Tauchnitz," often odd volumes. I marvel, as much as Hamlet ever did, to see the passionate influence of the storyteller upon those full-grown ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... to the conversation of these two men, it was mechanically and at random that M. de Tregars and Maxence threw their cards on the table, and uttered the common terms of the game of piquet, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... he had discontinued this habit. However, he still dropped into Frenna's one or two nights in the week. He spent a pleasant hour there, smoking his huge porcelain pipe and drinking his beer. He never joined any of the groups of piquet players around the tables. In fact, he hardly spoke to anyone but the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... trial we went through, was the Ordeal of Servants. Mary Anne's cousin deserted into our coal-hole, and was brought out, to our great amazement, by a piquet of his companions in arms, who took him away handcuffed in a procession that covered our front-garden with ignominy. This nerved me to get rid of Mary Anne, who went so mildly, on receipt of wages, that I was surprised, until I found out about the tea-spoons, and also ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... left, exposing the men to the fire of their artillery. At sun set, and during the greatest part of the night, this diversion was seconded by a feigned attack of the Corsicans: which so effectually deceived the enemy, that they withdrew a considerable piquet from the spot where the principal battery was to be constructed, in order to support the Mollinochesco; and, directing the whole of their fire to that point, enabled the troops to ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... Richmond with Mrs. Burney. She has been dying, but she went to the Isle of Wight and recovered once more, and she is finishing her recovery at Richmond. When there I intend to read Novels and play at Piquet all ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... acquainted. He could repeat all the observations that were retailed in the atmosphere of the play-houses, and had all the good things of the high wits by rote long before they made their way into the jest-books. The intervals between conversation were employed in teaching my daughters piquet, or sometimes in setting my two little ones to box to make them sharp, as he called it; but the hopes of having him for a son-in-law, in some measure blinded us to all his imperfections. It must be owned that my wife laid a thousand schemes to entrap him; or, to speak it more tenderly, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... brought the cards and pipes, which we lit. Soon the room was full of dense smoke, wherein our host and the Abbe Coignard played gravely at piquet. ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... story of the tenor, the pork butcher, who was heard giving out such a volume of sound that the sausages were set in motion above him; he was fed, clothed, and educated on the five francs a day earned in the music hall in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet; and when he made his debut at the Theatre Lyrique, thou wert in the last stage of consumption and too ill to go to hear thy pupil's success. He was immediately engaged by ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... suspicion. I went back with Selincourt to his rooms and we sat up the rest of the night smoking and playing auction piquet. He won about five pounds off me. Ask him: ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... interfere. No, Mr Malcolm Stratton, I shall not let you call them in for more reasons than one. Ah! you begin to believe me. Let me see now, can I give you a little corroborative evidence? You don't want it, but I will. Did the admiral ever tell you what an excellent player I was at piquet?" ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... pursued by the royalists, and pay has been issued to lighten the military chest, the officers, upon halting, would spread their ponchos on the ground, and play until it was time to resume the march; and this was frequently done even on the eve of a battle. Soldiers on piquet often gambled within sight of an enemy's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... business, it's a good thing when you go out not to be exposed to meet eyes which seem to say to you, 'My dear fellow, your father has swindled me.' Papa has but one passion: from five to seven every day he plays piquet at his club, at ten sous a point, and as he is an excellent player, he wins seven times out of ten. He keeps an account of his games with the same scrupulous exactitude he has in all things, and he was telling the day before yesterday that piquet this year had brought him in six thousand ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy

... point of six, "that's not the tragedy; it's the little bits coming to an end meanwhile, before the whole comes to an end: that's the tragedy...." But he added with another of his jolly laughs: "We must play. Piquet takes up ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... councils of Europe in the middle of the last century, were clever women; and that philosopheress Madame du Chatelet, who managed, at one and the same moment, the thread of an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a calculation in algebra, was a very clever woman! If Portia had been created as a mere instrument to bring about a dramatic catastrophe—if she had merely detected the flaw in Antonio's bond, and used it as a means to baffle the Jew, she might have been pronounced a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... Lord Fawn with peculiar reference to the Christian theology of the third and fourth centuries. She had planned the new flower-garden,—though Lady Fawn thought that she had done that herself. She had been invaluable during Clara Fawn's long illness. She knew every rule at croquet, and could play piquet. When the girls got up charades they had to acknowledge that everything depended on Miss Morris. They were good-natured, plain, unattractive girls, who spoke of her to her face as one who could easily do anything to which she might put her ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... play for money ruins whist: and seldom can his Club Persuade him to put counters (coins for Zulus!) on the rub; He has been known for lozenges to dabble with piquet; He wasn't Chief Attorney then, nor was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various

... this cheering and waving of handkerchiefs was going on Anne stood between the two brothers, who protectingly joined their hands behind her back, as if she were a delicate piece of statuary that a push might damage. Soon the King had passed, and receiving the military salutes of the piquet, joined the Queen and princesses at Gloucester Lodge, the homely house of red brick in ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... dispersed through the village for the purpose of recreation and refreshment. This happened to be the case with many of his men upon Wednesday morning the 11th of July, on which day, about eleven o'Clock Mr. Richard Allen galloped into the Court, and brought intelligence that he was pursued by a piquet guard of the Rebels, whom he narrowly escaped as they were well mounted; and he was confident a considerable force was approaching. The alarm was instantly given—every exertion was made to collect the scattered men, and parties were stationed in the most advantageous positions. ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones

... at piquet, was much teased by a looker-on who was short-sighted, and, having a very long nose, greatly incommoded the player. To get rid of the annoyance, the player took out his handkerchief, and applied it to the nose ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... could be heard distinctly, speaking aloud to Colbert, in the same cabinet where Colbert might have heard, a few days before, the king speaking aloud with M. d'Artagnan. The guards remained as a mounted piquet before the principal gate; and the report was quickly spread through the city that monsieur le capitaine of the musketeers had just been arrested by order of the king. Then, these men were seen to be in motion, as, in the good old times ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... at the Mansion-House all night, and helped to board up the smashed windows; but at daylight Colonel Brereton came and insisted on withdrawing the piquet on guard—not, however, sending a relief for them, on the plea that they only collected a crowd. The instant they were withdrawn, down came the mob in fresh force, so desperate that all the defences were torn down, and they swarmed ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gaiety continues. After I had written to you yesterday, the brain being wholly extinct, I played piquet all morning with Graham. After lunch down to call on the U.S. Consul, hurt in a steeple-chase; thence back to the new girls' school which Lady J. was to open, and where my ladies met me. Lady J. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... never seen her do otherwise than she does every day, that is to say, walk in the valley, play piquet with her aunt, and visit the poor. The peasants call her Brigitte la Rose; I have never heard a word against her except that she goes through the woods alone at all hours of the day and night; but that is when engaged in charitable work. She is the ministering angel in ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... his way to Buston, he did bethink himself where these places were to be found. His throat was parched, and the thirst upon him was extreme. Cards were the weapons he had used. He had played ecarte, piquet, whist, and baccarat, with an occasional night of some foolish game such as cribbage or vingt-et-un. Though he had always lost, he had always played with men who had played honestly. There is much that is, in truth, dishonest even in honest play. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... searched the encyclopedia for the description of an intellectual game of cards, arranged as a duet, and found one. It is piquet! Now I can wait developments peacefully, for are there not also in reserve ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... you are!" Harietta cried delightedly, rising from her sofa and throwing herself into his arms. "I've packed Stanislass off to the St. James' to play piquet. I have been all alone waiting for you for the last hour—I began to ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... what we read; they did my father good, and me too; but they were few, and often cut short. As soon as mamma joined us, our books had to be laid aside. They bored her, she said, or hindered her own reading; and she and papa played draughts and chess and piquet. Mamma was not in a bored state at other times; for she was busy with letters and plans and arrangements, always in a leisurely way, but yet busy. It was a sort of business with which I had no sympathy, and which ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... regularly appointed envoy, Girard de Rayneville, who had full power to recognize the independence of the States, Silas Deane, one of the American commissioners, and such well-known officers as the comte de la Motte-Piquet, the Bailli de Suffren, De Guichen, D'Orvilliers, De Grasse and others. The history of this first expedition is a short and disastrous one. The voyage was long, owing to the ships being unequally matched in speed, and it was ninety days after leaving Toulon before they anchored ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... doubt, A rogue with venison to a saint without. Who would not praise Patritio's high desert, His hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart, His comprehensive head! all interests weighed, All Europe saved, yet Britain not betrayed. He thanks you not, his pride is in piquet, Newmarket-fame, and judgment at a bet. What made (say Montagne, or more sage Charron) Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon? A perjured prince a leaden saint revere, A godless regent tremble at a star? ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... midnight, on our arrival at the handsome little town of Arruda, which was destined to be the piquet post of our division, in front of the fortified lines. The quartering of our division, whether by night or by day, was an affair of about five minutes. The quarter-master-general preceded the troops, accompanied by the brigade-majors and the quarter-masters of regiments; and ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... "No, they hadn't got piquet, but they're the plain shape you like. You may thank us they didn't send you things ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... who introduced cards, and the kind inventors of piquet and cribbage, for they employed six hours at least of her ladyship's day, during which her family was pretty easy. Without this occupation my lady frequently declared she should die. Her dependants one after another relieved guard—'twas rather ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... his taste: some men prefer to play At mystery, as others at piquet. Some sit in mystic meditation; some Parade the street with tambourine and drum. One studies to decipher ancient lore Which, proving stuff, he studies all the more; Another swears that learning is but good ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... received was from the Report of a Play of Moliere's of three Acts, called Les Fascheux, upon which I wrote a great part of this before I read that." He borrowed, after reading it, the first scene in the second act, and Moliere's story of Piquet, which he translated into Backgammon, and says, "that he who makes a common practice of stealing other men's wit, would if he could with the same safety, steal anything else." Shadwell mentions, however, nothing ...
— The Bores • Moliere

... young and good-looking man heard the clock strike, and took his leave. When the courtyard echoed with the sound of a departing carriage, the Vicomtesse looked up, saw that no one was present save her brother and a friend of the family finishing their game of piquet, and went across to her daughter. The girl, standing by the chimney-piece, apparently examining a transparent fire-screen, was listening to the sounds from the courtyard in a way that justified ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... ghosts. They abhorred a mirror's breakage. They disliked a Friday's errand. They shuddered over a seven-times sneeze or at a howling dog at midnight. And the gentle sex, especially, would and did tell fortunes almost as jealously as play quadrille and piquet. Let us be courteous to them. Let us remember that Esoteric Buddhism, Faith Healing, and Psychic Phenomena were not yet enjoying systematic cultivation and solemn propagandism; and that relatively few dying folk were allowed to "go on with their dying" as part of a process ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson

... better disposed toward the English. "All I can say," Celoron de Bienville announced when he returned from the Ohio in 1750, "is that all the nations of these countries are very ill-disposed toward the French, and devoted to the English." And in the next year Pere Piquet complained that Oswego "not only spoils our trade, but puts the English into communication with a vast number of our Indians far and near. It is true that they like French brandy better than English rum; but they prefer English goods to ours, and can buy for two beaver skins at Oswego a ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... It will also enable any one who may care to do so to restore to a place among our home amusements a game which carried all before it in Queen Anne's day, and which is really, when cleared of its gambling details, as good a domestic game for three players as cribbage or piquet is for two. My "Court Gamester," which was in its fifth edition in 1728, after devoting its best energies to ombre, contented its readers in fewer pages with the addition only of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... of interviewing the Governor all day, but at night I visited him by invitation to play a game of piquet. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... was supposed to be the wickedest old card-player in all Littlebath, and there were strange stories afloat of the things she had done. There were Stumfoldians who declared that she had been seen through the blinds teaching her own maid piquet on a Sunday afternoon; but any horror will get itself believed nowadays. How could they have known that it was not beggar-my-neighbour? But piquet was named because it is supposed in the Stumfoldian world to be the wickedest of ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... wakeful vigilance was kept up by the settlers throughout the night; but the out-piquet having imprudently ventured, in violation of their orders, to leave their station at the dawn of day, were immediately followed by the native force; who, suddenly presenting a front of ten yards in width, fired a volley, and then rushing forward, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... the Church of Saint-Roch; has seized the Pont Neuf, our piquet there retreating without fire. Stray shots fall from Lepelletier; rattle down on the very Tuileries staircase. On the other hand, women advance dishevelled, shrieking, Peace; Lepelletier behind them waving its hat in sign that we shall fraternise. Steady! The Artillery Officer is steady as bronze; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... southward to the Pont ci-devant Royal, rank round the sanctuary of the Tuilleries, a ring of steel discipline; let every gunner have his match burning, and all men stand to their arms. Lepelletier has seized the Church of Saint Roche; has seized the Pont Neuf, our piquet there retreating thence without fire. Stray shots fall from Lepelletier, rattle down on the very Tuilleries' stair-case. On the other hand, women advance dishevelled, shrieking peace; Lepelletier behind them waving ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various



Words linked to "Piquet" :   picket, torture, torturing, card game



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