Q: How did the word “card” end up in expressions like “play the race card” and “play the gender card”?
A: The “card” in those expressions ultimately comes from the use of the word in card playing. Think of it as a metaphorical use of a valuable playing card, like an ace that completes a royal flush in poker.
Middle English borrowed the word “card” from Middle French, where the plural cartes referred to a game of cards, as in jouer aux cartes (to play cards).
When the English term first appeared in the 15th century, it was also used in the plural to mean such a game. The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the “Code of Laws” for the town of Walsall in the West Midlands of England.
A statute, believed written around 1422, sets penalties for “plaiyng at eny unlawefull games,” including “dyce, tables [backgammon], cardes.” (From A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood, 1887, edited by Frederic W. Willmore.)
The noun soon came to be used for the cards themselves. The term “cardes for pleiyng” appears in a 1463-64 law prohibiting the importation of playing cards. (From The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504, edited by Chris Given-Wilson in 2005.)
A century later, the OED says, “card” took on “various figurative uses arising from card games, esp. denoting something that may be useful in obtaining one’s objective, or a person who can be called upon to support one’s case.”
The dictionary says the noun was used “chiefly with modifying adjective, as good, safe, strong, etc.” The first OED citation uses “sure card” to mean someone or something “that can be relied on to attain an intended end” or success:
“Nowe thys is a sure carde, nowe I maye well saye That a cowarde crakinge here I dyd fynde.” (From Thersytes, an anonymous play, sometimes attributed to Nicholas Udall, first published in the early 1560s. Thersytes was a Greek warrior slain by Achilles for mocking him.)
In the 19th century, according to Oxford citations, the noun when used with a “modifying adjective (as knowing, rum, etc.)” took on the sense of “a person (esp. a man) regarded as having the specified character or quality.”
The earliest citation is from a short piece by Dickens that was originally published as “Scenes and Characters, No. 4, Making a Night of It” in the magazine Bell’s Life in London (Oct. 18, 1835) and later as “Making a Night of It” in Sketches by Boz (1836):
“But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered as a ‘knowing card,’ a ‘fast-goer,’ and so forth, conducted himself in a very different manner.” We’ve expanded the citation.
Two decades later, the OED says, “card” by itself took on the sense of “an ingenious, clever, or audacious person.”
The earliest example cited is in Dickens’s novel Bleak House (1853): “You know what a card Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter.”
In the early 20th century, according to OED citations, the term took on the sense of “an odd or eccentric person, esp. one in whom these qualities are regarded as entertaining or comical; a joker.”
The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from “His Worship the Goosedriver,” a short story by the English author Arnold Bennett in Tales of the Five Towns (1905):
“It would be an immense, an unparalleled farce; a wonder, a topic for years, the crown of his reputation as a card.” In the story, a jokester buys 12 geese and 2 ganders from a gooseherd and tries to herd them to his home. The geese have other plans!
Finally we come to the usage you ask about. Like the use of “card” for a person, this one also emerged in the first half of the 19th century.
The OED says “to play the —— card” means “to introduce a specified issue or topic in the hope of gaining sympathy or political advantage, by appealing to the sentiments or prejudices of one’s audience.”
In the dictionary’s first citation, the word “card” precedes the hot topic: “The Tories will doubtless play the card of ‘Irish misgovernment’ against Ministers” (The Scotsman, June 1, 1839).
The next Oxford example reverses the order in referring to “Liberal friends in Ulster, who wish to play the land purchase card at the elections” (The Times, London, May 22, 1885).
The next citation uses “Orange card” in the sense of an appeal to Northern Irish Protestants:
“I decided some time ago that if the G.O.M. [Grand Old Man, a reference to Gladstone] went for Home Rule, the Orange card would be the one to play” (from a letter written Feb. 16, 1886, by Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s father).
The earliest Oxford example of “race card” uses it to mean an appeal to anti-Black voters: “the Tory leadership declined to play the race card” (The Observer, March 3, 1974).
The OED doesn’t have an example of “gender card,” but Merriam-Webster online says it showed up in the US more than a dozen years later.
M-W cites an analysis by Gary Orren, a professor of public policy at Harvard, about the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of Evelyn Murphy, Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts:
“But Orren thinks if Murphy plays the gender card in her ads she will lose the broader coalition of votes needed to win the election” (The Boston Globe, Aug. 9,1990).
The OED says “play the race card” and similar expressions can now be “depreciative, and chiefly used in accusations of others,” when they mean “to exploit one’s membership of a specified minority or marginalized group as a means of gaining sympathy or an unfair advantage.”
A recent Oxford example cites a Black soldier who appeared in recruitment posters and was “attacked on social media by white colleagues for ‘playing the race card’ to secure career advancement” (Morning Star, London, Sept. 25, 2020).
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