cribbage

Named from the "crib" consisting of certain cards laid aside by each player.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɹɪbɪd͡ʒ/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

cribbage (countable and uncountable, plural cribbages)

1. (card games) A point-counting card game for two players, with variants for three or four players; the cribbage board used for scoring to 61 or 121 points in numerous small increments is characteristic.
   • 1842, [Katherine] Thomson, chapter V, in Widows and Widowers. A Romance of Real Life., volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 105:

     His solicitude for Sir Horace, his brother-in-law, was extreme, and he passed hours in the sick youth’s chamber, playing at cribbage, or dominos, or indulging the young baronet’s remarkable turn for cutting out trees, animals, or birds with tiny scissors on delicate paper.

   • 1918, Katherine Mansfield, Prelude, Selected Stories, Oxford World's Classics paperback 2002, page 114

     How much more real this dream was than that they should go back to the house where the sleeping children lay and where Stanley and Beryl played cribbage.

   • 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 31

     "No one remembers cribbage now," […]

2. A variety of pocket billiards that, like the card game, awards points for pairs that total 15. A player who pockets a ball of a particular number must then immediately pocket the companion ball that brings the number to 15.
3. A point scored in this variety of pocket billiards.

• crib

• cribbage board
• cribbage-faced
• crib board