roulette

Borrowed from French roulette (“roulette, little wheel”). The sense "situation with a random chance of incurring serious harm" may be abstracted from Russian roulette.

• IPA^(key): /ɹuːˈlɛt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

roulette (countable and uncountable, plural roulettes)

1. (uncountable) A game of chance in which a small ball is made to move round rapidly on a circle divided off into numbered (usually red and black) spaces. When the ball stops, it indicates the result of a variety of wagers permitted by the game.

   Synonym: (historical) roly-poly

2. (uncountable, figuratively) An instance of risk-taking, especially when the downside exceeds the upside (contrary to the game of roulette where only the wager is lost).
   • 1982 April 28, Donna Hilts, “TV Report On Vaccine Stirs Bitter Controversy”, in Washington Post:

     Doctors and health officials said that the WRC-TV documentary, "DPT: Vaccine Roulette," emphasized the risks of the vaccine while ignoring the dangers of the disease, which has been almost wiped out in this country.

   • 2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 290:

     They would all rather take their chances with the existing policy-making roulette rather than follow process discipline.

   • 2020 November 2, Adam Finn quoted by Alessandra Scotto Di Santolo in Daily Express:

     By contrast giving treatments open-label slows everything down by leading us up blind alleys while playing roulette with our patients' lives.

3. (countable) A small toothed wheel used by engravers to roll over a plate in order to produce rows of dots.
4. (countable) A similar wheel used to roughen the surface of a plate, as in making alterations in a mezzotint.
5. (countable, geometry) The locus of a point on a plane curve that rolls without slipping along another fixed plane curve.
6. (philately) Any of the small incisions on a sheet of stamps, used as an alternative to perforations.
7. A cylindrical curler for the hair.

• roll

roulette (third-person singular simple present roulettes, present participle rouletting, simple past and past participle rouletted)

1. To separate or decorate by incisions made with a small toothed wheel.

   to roulette a sheet of postage stamps

• cycloid
• epicycloid
• hypocycloid
• Wikipedia article on roulette, the game
• Wikipedia article on roulettes in geometry

• “roulette”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

From rouler +‎ -ette.

• IPA^(key): /ʁu.lɛt/

• Audio

  (file)

roulette f (plural roulettes)

1. small wheel
2. caster, castor
3. (geometry, archaic) cycloid
4. roulette (game)
5. roulette wheel
6. (engraving) roulette
7. roller

   patin à roulettes ― roller skating

8. (dentistry) dentist drill
9. pastry roller

• rouette

• WordReference, roulette

• “roulette”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Borrowed from French roulette.

• IPA^(key): /ruˈlɛt/[1]
• Rhymes: -ɛt

roulette f (invariable)

1. roulette (game of chance)

• roulette russa (“Russian roulette”)

• tutelerò