ace up one's sleeve

English

WOTD – 7 August 2006

Etymology

From the dishonest hiding of a high-value ace card for use during play, e.g. in the game of poker.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

ace up one's sleeve (plural aces up one's sleeve)

1. (idiomatic) A surprise advantage of which others are not aware.
   • 2023 October 14, “Exploring the SCP Foundation: SCP-7450 - L is for Lamentations” (0:49 from the start), in The Exploring Series‎^[1], archived from the original on 14 October 2023:

     SCP-7450 is an apocalyptic scenario where the Foundation has to resort to an ace up their sleeves and belief in a higher power solves the problem, but not in the way anyone would expect.

Synonyms

• (US) ace in the hole
• trick up one's sleeve

Translations

a surprise of which others are not aware

• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 秘密王牌 (bei³ mat⁶ wong⁴ paai^4-2)

  Hokkien: 秘密王牌 (pì-bi̍t ông-pâi)

  Mandarin: 秘密王牌 (mìmì wángpái)

• Czech: Eso v rukávu
• Estonian: Trump tagataskust
• Finnish: ässä hihassa
• French: joker (fr), as dans la manche, atout dans la manche m, avoir un atout dans sa manche, garder un atout dans sa manche
• German: Ass im Ärmel n, Trumpf im Ärmel m
• Italian: asso nella manica m
• Japanese: 切り札 (ja) (kirifuda), 奥の手 (ja) (okunote)
• Norwegian: ess i ermet
• Polish: as w rękawie m
• Portuguese: carta nas mangas f, ás na manga (pt)
• Russian: козырь (ru) (kozyrʹ), туз в рукаве́ m (tuz v rukavé), козы́рна́я ка́рта f (kozýrnája kárta)
• Serbo-Croatian: кец у рукаву
• Spanish: as en la manga, as bajo la manga
• Swedish: äss i rockärmen