Wiktionary

roulette

See also: Roulette

English edit

 
A postcard from the 1930s or 1940s featuring roulette players
 
A collection of engraving roulettes

Etymology edit

Borrowed from French roulette (“roulette, little wheel”). The sense "situation with a random chance of incurring serious harm" may be abstracted from Russian roulette.

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /ɹuːˈlɛt/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛt

Noun edit

 
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

roulette (countable and uncountable, plural roulettes)

  1. (uncountable) A game of chance in which a small ball is made to move round rapidly on a circle divided off into numbered (usually red and black) spaces. When the ball stops, it indicates the result of a variety of wagers permitted by the game.
    Synonym: (historical) roly-poly
  2. (uncountable, figuratively) An instance of risk-taking, especially when the downside exceeds the upside (contrary to the game of roulette where only the wager is lost).
    • 1982 April 28, Donna Hilts, “TV Report On Vaccine Stirs Bitter Controversy”, in Washington Post:
      Doctors and health officials said that the WRC-TV documentary, "DPT: Vaccine Roulette," emphasized the risks of the vaccine while ignoring the dangers of the disease, which has been almost wiped out in this country.
    • 2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 290:
      They would all rather take their chances with the existing policy-making roulette rather than follow process discipline.
    • 2020 November 2, Adam Finn quoted by Alessandra Scotto Di Santolo in Daily Express[1]:
      By contrast giving treatments open-label slows everything down by leading us up blind alleys while playing roulette with our patients' lives.
  3. (countable) A small toothed wheel used by engravers to roll over a plate in order to produce rows of dots.
  4. (countable) A similar wheel used to roughen the surface of a plate, as in making alterations in a mezzotint.
  5. (countable, geometry) The locus of a point on a plane curve that rolls without slipping along another fixed plane curve.
  6. (philately) Any of the small incisions on a sheet of stamps, used as an alternative to perforations.
  7. A cylindrical curler for the hair.

Derived terms edit

Related terms edit

Translations edit

Verb edit

roulette (third-person singular simple present roulettes, present participle rouletting, simple past and past participle rouletted)

  1. To separate or decorate by incisions made with a small toothed wheel.
    to roulette a sheet of postage stamps

See also edit

References edit

French edit

 
French Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia fr

Etymology edit

From rouler +‎ -ette.

Pronunciation edit

Noun edit

roulette f (plural roulettes)

  1. small wheel
  2. caster, castor
  3. (geometry, archaic) cycloid
  4. roulette (game)
  5. roulette wheel
  6. (engraving) roulette
  7. roller
    patin à roulettes ― roller skating
  8. (dentistry) dentist drill
  9. pastry roller

Synonyms edit

Derived terms edit

Descendants edit

References edit

Further reading edit

Italian edit

Etymology edit

Borrowed from French roulette.

Pronunciation edit

Noun edit

roulette f (invariable)

  1. roulette (game of chance)

Derived terms edit

References edit

  1. ^ roulette in Luciano Canepari, Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (DiPI)

Anagrams edit

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