to throw up the cards
Preserved but no longer current.
To give up as a bad job; to acknowledge you have no hope of success. In some games of cards, as poker, a player has the liberty of saying whether he will play or not, and if his hand is hopelessly bad he throws in his cards and sits out till the next deal.
Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)
Sources & notes
Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.
Common questions
What does “to throw up the cards” mean?
To give up as a bad job; to acknowledge you have no hope of success. In some games of cards, as poker, a player has the liberty of saying whether he will play or not, and if his hand is hopelessly bad he throws in his cards and sits out till the next deal.
Is “to throw up the cards” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.