card-sharp

card-sharp (plural card-sharps)

1. Alternative form of cardsharp
   • 1850, Henry Downes Miles, chapter XI, in Claude du Val, a Romance, of the Days of Charles the Second, Edwin Dipple, […], →OCLC, page 191:

     While thus running on, the knavish card-sharp was slowly, and with apparent fairness, cutting the pack, which was prepared by having every card but the honours of each suit cut at the ends, in so slight a degree, however, as not to shorten them enough to be detectible by an ordinary eye, though sufficiently to be felt by a fine and practised finger, which could thus ensure a court-card, while the red cards of the pack (or deck of cards, as they were then commonly called) were deprived of their proper size by a similar process of shaving off the sides, so as to make the turn-up either red o black at will of the player.

   • 1858, T[homas] L[ake] Harris, “Fourth Interview”, in Appendix to the Arcana of Christianity: The Song of Satan: A Series of Poems, […], New York, N.Y.: New Church Publishing Association, […], →OCLC, page l:

     'Why Moses,' said Satan, 'nor Angels nor sinners / Can live without eating; let's go to our dinners; / Men who play at old sledge cannot both be the winners; / The card-sharps, you know, lose the dimes to beginners; […]'

   • [1923], Edgar Wallace, “Abe Bellamy and His Secretary”, in The Green Archer, London: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC, page 24:

     You'd been running with a gang of card-sharps when I picked you up, and the police were waiting their chance to gaol you.