Bingo

Part of speech: interjection, noun

Pronunciation: /ˈbɪŋ.ɡəʊ/

Definitions

A game involving randomly drawn numbers where participants mark their cards to achieve a specific pattern, along with an expression used to denote joy or a moment of clarity
An activity where players compete to cover numbers on a card based on drawn selections, coupled with an exclamation signaling triumph or understanding
A game played by matching called numbers on a card to win by completing a pattern ; a shouted word to express sudden accomplishment or understanding

Etymology: Most people assume the shout comes from the game, the triumphant cry of a player with a full card. It is the other way round. The exclamation came first, and the game borrowed its name from it. As a cry of sudden success, "bingo!" turns up in American English in the 1920s, with a firm record from 1925. It is generally treated as an extended form of "bing," an imitation of a ringing sound: the ping of a bell, the clang of something struck squarely. Like "bang," "zing" and "ping," it is less a word with ancestors than a noise given spelling, the sound a thing makes when it lands exactly where it should. Its deeper origin is unknown, and dictionaries say so plainly. There is an older word that looks the same. In the thieves' cant of the late seventeenth century and in Francis Grose's slang dictionaries of the eighteenth, "bingo" meant brandy or other strong spirits. Grose also listed the "bingo boy," a dram drinker. It has been suggested that the liquor word is related to "stingo," an old slang name for strong ale, and some have tried to link the brandy sense to the modern shout. Nobody has shown the connection, and the two may simply be different words that happen to share a sound. By about 1924 the shout had become the name of a game. Number-calling games of chance were already old, and in America one form was played at carnivals and fairs as "beano," because players marked their cards with dried beans. Under its new name, the game spread across the United States during the 1920s and became a fixture of church halls and social clubs. A popular story claims to explain the renaming. In the late 1920s, it goes, a New York toy salesman named Edwin Lowe watched beano being played at a carnival, took the game home, and heard an overexcited friend shout "Bingo!" instead of "Beano!" when she won. Lowe did market the game widely, but the story cannot explain the name, which was already attached to the game by the middle of the decade. A player who yelled it was simply using the ordinary cry of the day. That cry never left. Long after the game made it famous, it survives as the sound of any answer clicking into place: the detective's flash of insight, the key that finally fits, the bell ringing because something has hit its mark.

Synonyms: jackpot, success