Lanterloo

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A old card game for several players, popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, closely related to the game of loo
2. An early trick-taking card game that was fashionable in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and resembled loo
3. A historical card game played by several people, in which players won tricks and pots, popular in the 1600s and 1700s

Etymology: Lanterloo was a card game that flourished in English drawing rooms in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and its name came from a nonsense refrain. The French word "lanturlu" was originally the chorus of a sixteenth-century song, a syllable-filled tag with no meaning of its own, much like the "fa la la" of later carols. Gamblers took the phrase as the name of a game, and the sound stuck. The meaning of the refrain was lost along the way, so the word now points to nothing but the cards themselves. Players of the game tried to win tricks while avoiding the penalty of having none, which gives the game its character as a trick-taking pastime played for stakes.