Trump

 

Trump

                    Tarot trump card, Le Fou (the Fool) Besancon, 1820

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Before everyone groans and demands, ‘No more, we’ve had enough,’ I should point out that this post is nothing (or, at least, not a lot!) to do with the orange one, variously known as the felon, 47, Trump the Dump, and other delightful monikers, more of which can be found here.

A trump card in a game of bridge, or poker, or some other incomprehensible and highly addictive, fairly intellectual card game (to someone who only plays Snap, Cheat and various Patience games, the foregoing are all games played by the intelligentsia) is one which outranks all the cards of a non-trump suit. Thus, to trump someone is to beat them, and has come to mean having an advantage over others, perhaps in business.

Trump once referred to individuals who were considered admirable – it’s a dated term of approbation, as in, ‘My solicitor does wonderful work – he’s a trump.’ It was also a noun, meaning someone who played the trumpet.

Trump is  an archaic term for a trumpet. In the King James bible, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 52, it says, ‘ . . . in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’  

A trump refers to a person or thing which ‘proclaims, celebrates, or summons loudly like a trumpet.’

At this point, I began to wonder if the orange one had changed his name to reflect all these meanings, though, in 1642, the ‘Trumpe or Snoute of an Elephant’ was the name applied to what we now call the trunk.

However, the thought that initiated this wander through words ancient and modern, was that ‘trump’ refers to the act of audibly breaking wind. I thought that quite fitting.