cribbage

A point-counting card game for two players, with variants for three or four players; the cribbage board used for scoring to 61 or 121 points in numerous small increments is characteristic.

Noun

  1. A point-counting card game for two players, with variants for three or four players; the cribbage board used for scoring to 61 or 121 points in numerous small increments is characteristic.
    • His solicitude for Sir Horace, his brother-in-law, was extreme, and he passed hours in the sick youth’s chamber, playing at cribbage, or dominos, or indulging the young baronet’s remarkable turn for cutting out trees,...
    • How much more real this dream was than that they should go back to the house where the sleeping children lay and where Stanley and Beryl played cribbage. - 1918, Katherine Mansfield, Prelude, Selected Stories, Oxford...
    • "No one remembers cribbage now," […] - 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 31
  2. A variety of pocket billiards that, like the card game, awards points for pairs that total 15. A player who pockets a ball of a particular number must then immediately pocket the companion ball that brings the number to 15.
  3. A point scored in this variety of pocket billiards.

Origin

From crib + -age. Named from the "crib" consisting of certain cards laid aside by each player.

Forms

cribbages

Wikipedia

Cribbage

Synonyms

crib

Derived

cribbage board cribbage-faced crib board