Eggcorn Forum

Poker has given English a number of idioms. For many years poker was gender-segregated and, until the last decade, it had almost no media following. An idiom-generating game that is opaque to a large segment of the population is a recipe for high eggcorn production. A few wild cards from the intersection of cards and gambling…

(1) “Four-flushing,” as in “you faking, four-flushing son of a gutter rat,” takes its meaning from stud poker. In stud poker, a few cards from each person’s hand – upcards – are dealt face-up on the table. Everyone can see them. Other cards – hole cards – are dealt face down and become part of a player’s private hand. In versions of stud poker with four upcards, all four cards might be from the same suit. A hole card of the same suit would give the person a flush, a strong winning sequence. A flush ranks high among poker hands because it has low probability. The chances of being dealt five cards and all five cards being the same suit are about 1:500. A player with four upcards of the same suite, however, has about a one in four chance of having a flush if he has one hole card. This puts the player in a good position to win the hand with an actual flush or, lacking the right hole card, to bluff other players out of the game. The term “four-flusher” thus became a name for a braggart, a fake.

The web has many examples of “floor flushing.” It could be a misspelling, the ‘l’ of “flushing” being attracted to “four,” but it could also be an eggcorn. “Four-flushing” is often used an insult (Chevy Chase includes it in his famous string of Christmas Vacation epithets. Hear the string at 3:40 in this video.) “Floor flushing” sounds like a scatological insult when “flush” is taken in reference to toilets rather than cards.

Examples of “floor-flushing:”

Transcription of a mashup using Chevy Chase string of epithets: “ floor-flushing ”

Fictional irony in e-zine: “We’re gonna give ‘em to the count of three to get their ugly, floor flushing keesters out of the U.S. of A before we pump their guts full of lead.”

Game forum: “You snake-licking, floor-flushing, bug-eyed sacks of monkey not so good. ”

News blog: “I thought “my God what a lying, floor-flushing sack of stuff this guy is.”

(2) The hole cards mentioned above frequently become “hold cards,” extending the hole/hold confusion we have documented in earlier posts on this forum in words such as buttonhold and pigeonhold. If one of your hole cards is an ace, you have the proverbial ace in the hole, which becomes, in some minds, “ace in the hold:”

Merchandizing forum: “She has always been my ace in the hold.”

Political blog: “ Askins’ final ace-in-the-hold is a late endorsement by former Oklahoma Sooners’ football coach Barry Switzer,”

Associated Press release: “Church’s ace-in-the-hold is producer Jay Joyce, who brings unusual rhythms and fresh arrangements to the rock-influenced songs. ”

(3) “Penny annie” (from penny ante), which we noted in 2008, also belongs to the set of transformed poker idioms.

(4) The web has many examples of “call his/her/my/their buff” for “call one’s bluff.” Hard to imagine what these folks have in mind, though. “Buff” and “bluff” don’t share much meaning.

Anyway, I’ve upped the ante and put my cards on the table. I’ll never take the pot by putting on a poker face and playing my cards close to the chest — best to show your hand when the chips are down, I say. Even when the cards are stacked against you.