Describing Words

How would you describe a casino gambling montage? Right now in my story, my character enters a casino with a group of new made friends, and a few complimentary thousand dollars in his pocket. Right now, it's incredibly dry, and is just the narrator telling a few stories, and explaining the surroundings and what they play.

1. There’s some terminology that’s beneficial to understand when playing casino games, so we have compiled this useful glossary that covers the most commonly used words and phrases. Some of these terms are specific to online casinos, while others are used in land-based casinos.
2. Casino vocabulary starts with the basic words we use to describe elements of the gaming floor, the casino building and the gaming activities: Table games, gaming floor, the pit, players, gamblers Roulette, blackjack, three card poker, casino stud poker, casino brag, punto banco, punto 2000, bacaraat, dice, craps, big six, sic bo.
3. Casino synonyms and Casino antonyms. Top synonym for casino (another word for casino) is gambling den.

The idea for the Describing Words engine came when I was building the engine for Related Words (it's like a thesaurus, but gives you a much broader set of related words, rather than just synonyms). While playing around with word vectors and the 'HasProperty' API of conceptnet, I had a bit of fun trying to get the adjectives which commonly describe a word. Eventually I realised that there's a much better way of doing this: parse books!

Project Gutenberg was the initial corpus, but the parser got greedier and greedier and I ended up feeding it somewhere around 100 gigabytes of text files - mostly fiction, including many contemporary works. The parser simply looks through each book and pulls out the various descriptions of nouns.

Hopefully it's more than just a novelty and some people will actually find it useful for their writing and brainstorming, but one neat little thing to try is to compare two nouns which are similar, but different in some significant way - for example, gender is interesting: 'woman' versus 'man' and 'boy' versus 'girl'. On an inital quick analysis it seems that authors of fiction are at least 4x more likely to describe women (as opposed to men) with beauty-related terms (regarding their weight, features and general attractiveness). In fact, 'beautiful' is possibly the most widely used adjective for women in all of the world's literature, which is quite in line with the general unidimensional representation of women in many other media forms. If anyone wants to do further research into this, let me know and I can give you a lot more data (for example, there are about 25000 different entries for 'woman' - too many to show here).

The blueness of the results represents their relative frequency. You can hover over an item for a second and the frequency score should pop up. The 'uniqueness' sorting is default, and thanks to my Complicated Algorithm™, it orders them by the adjectives' uniqueness to that particular noun relative to other nouns (it's actually pretty simple). As you'd expect, you can click the 'Sort By Usage Frequency' button to adjectives by their usage frequency for that noun.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source mongodb which was used in this project.

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Playing games and gambling in casinos has been a pastime of people for many centuries. In its impressive and varied history casinos have grown and expanded with the number and types of different games available growing year upon year. As the casino business has developed so has its language with many interesting terms and jargon being used to describe games, betting types and actions commonly found in the industry. In modern times the industry has enjoyed continued growth, and now you don’t even have to enter a casino to play the games with a wealth of them available to play online, either by yourself, or interacting with other players from across the globe.

If you are an avid casino game player you may be familiar with some of the terms that are used, whether specific to a particular type of game such as poker or blackjack, or more general terms used in the gambling world. However those who are new to the thrill of the casino may not be so familiar, and it is easy to get confused when these terms are used, so it’s good to familiarise yourself with them to make sure you stay on top of your game! Below we have listed some of the most common slang terms used in the casino which you can study, memorise, or print out and keep with you to use as a handy reference guide when playing. You can also visit onlinecasinobluebook.com for more casino explanation on terms and slang! Once you have studied up on your casino slang terms why not take the Lingo of the casino quiz with Ladbrokes?!

Action – this is a casino term used to describe the placing of bets by player(s) in a game. It is most commonly used in card games and is easily remembered as the betting is the ‘action’ that the players have to make to be in the game. Alternatively a dealer in a poker card game can use the term to refer to which player is now in a position to bet.

Ante: This is a very useful phrase to know when it comes to gambling! The Ante is a bet that a player must make before other players can bet, so there is always money in the pot. It is used to force action by other players and keeps the game moving. Without the anti no one would be forced to bet so hands could be played where no money is won or lost which is not the point of the game!

Bankroll: It’s a good idea before you enter a casino or start playing online to have a bankroll. This refers to the entire sum of cash that you are willing to gamble with. A top tip is to never go over this to ensure you are always gambling within your means! If you don’t do this you might be referred to as a Pigeon, Plunker or Steamer – a person who continues to chase his or her losses.

Betting Limits -a fairly self explanatory term used to describe the specific limit that a player can bet with. Slotting machines often have betting limits i.e. 10/20 cents or $1 a go, and the ‘max bet’ is the multiple of this that you can bet up to, for example there may be a betting limit of $1 and the max bet is 5 x this, so $5.

A Blind bet -another easy term to remember that you will often hear in poker games where a player bets without knowing what card will come up next.

The Cage -this is where the casino keeps all its money!

ColourUp – this refers to chips you get at a casino to use in a variety of games. If you colour up, you are asking the dealer to exchange smaller value chips for larger ones. Often people do this at the end of their games to make it easier to exchange their chips for cash!

Eye-in-the-sky – these are the surveillance cameras that keep an eye on everything going on in the casino. Although casinos have many staff members and security guards who watch over players ensuring that they spot anyone who may be cheating, or behaving inappropriately, surveillance cameras are used as an extra measure to keep everything safe and secure.

Fish – if you are new to gambling you may well be referred to as a ‘fish’. It is a cheeky (but affectionate) way of describing someone who is new to the gambling world.

Hit me – used in blackjack to indicate to the dealer that the player wants another card

Junket – if you hear this term being used then keep your eyes peeled! A junket refers to a group of big, experienced, high rolling players who have been flown in especially on a charted plane at the casinos expense.

Overlay – if you hear this word you are in for a treat! Overlay means that the gambling situation is in favour of the gambler i.e you are more than likely to receive more money than you bet, if you win.

Shill – this is an interesting one. Essentially a shill is a filler player. They are paid by the house to sit in on games to make up numbers. They are commonly used in poker games. This is also called a ‘prop’ or ‘proposition player’.

Toke -A tip for the dealer. This is customary in larger casinos, and is expected if you have done pretty well while gambling at that particular table. Often dealers make the majority of their wages this way, so it is important to remember that if you leave with a good return on your investment. You might also hear someone being referred to as a George which means they tip well, or a Stiff for someone who does not!

Words To Describe Casino

Whales – a fantastic term used to describe players that are so rich they can happily lose millions in the casino seemingly without a care in the world. You rarely see a Whale around a regular casino playing table, and, as with actual Whales they are a very rare breed with only around 250 in the world!

Words To Describe Casino Tunica

Turkey – another term that you certainly don’t want to be called in the casino, or anywhere for that matter! A Turkey refers to someone who acts unpleasantly towards the dealer, usually because they are losing or think they know the rules better!

86’d (eighty-sixed) – Let’s hope you don’t hear this term being used too often! To be 86’d means getting thrown out of the casino for underhand or undesirable behaviour!

Words To Describe Casinos

Of course these are just some of the most commonly used slang terms you may hear while in a casino, or playing online. While there are many others, hopefully by understanding these you will have a better idea of how to play the most popular games and what to look out for to make your gambling experience an even more enjoyable and successful one.