full house

full house (plural full houses)

1. (poker) A hand that consists of three of a kind and a pair.
   • 1954, Philip Larkin, Continuing to Live:

     This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise — / Ah, if the game were poker, yes, / You might discard them, draw a full house! / But it's chess.

2. (rugby union) A single player scoring a try, conversion, penalty goal and drop goal in the same match
3. A situation in which a place is filled with people to its maximum capacity.
   • 2023 December 27, David Turner, “Silent lines...”, in RAIL, number 999, page 31:

     But the picture was different elsewhere - Theatre Royal Windsor recorded full houses, although the managing director stated that the actors had trouble getting to and from the theatre.

• hand (poker sense)

• overfull
• underfull

• → Japanese: フルハウス (furu hausu)
• → Portuguese: full house
• → Russian: фул-ха́ус (ful-xáus)

full house (not comparable)

1. (firearms) Having ammunition loaded to full allowable power, usually in reference to magnum handgun cartridges and shotgun shells.
   • American Handgunner, Heavyweight Bullets In The .357 Magnum

     An occasional pig, and not so occasional ram, would quiver and then settle back down without toppling, even when hit dead center with a full-house load with a 158-gr. jacketed .357 Magnum bullet.

Unadapted borrowing from English full house.

full house m (plural full houses)

1. (poker) full house (three of a kind and a pair)