hole card n.
(orig. US) a secret, which can be either a weakness that, once discovered, can be exploited, or a hidden strength.
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Trails Plowed Under 71: Ye know ye can’t tell what an Injun’s got for a hole-card by readin’ his countenance; winner or loser he looks the same. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | ‘The Snatching of Bookie Bob’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 123: Bookie Bob’s hole card is his ever-loving wife’s opinion of him. | |
| Runyon à la Carte 28: He knows my hole card is my knowledge of his background in junk. | |
| Hoodlums (2021) 105: [used of the unclothed female genitals] Smiling, wetting her lips. Always turning in time. Never the hole card. | |
| Long Run (1983) 122: I’ll look at your hole card. | |
| Cannibals 84: A rat-bastard-shit-heel [...] could never hurt you if you knew his hole card. | |
| Animal Factory 82: He wouldn’t have put his hand under his clothes even if he was [armed]; that showed the hole card. | |
| (con. c.1967) Firefight 163: He done peeped your hole card. | |
| Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 283: I knew I had a hole card: abortion. | |
| You Got Nothing Coming 196: Conversational foreplay over, Kansas is turning over his hole card. |
In phrases
(US prison/black) to work out a person’s (or consider one’s own) hidden attitudes and emotions.
| ‘Mexicana Rose’ in et al. Life (1976) 39: I peeped your hole card, you’re a funny-time lame. | |
| Crazy Kill 55: Everybody’s just peeping at their hole cards now. | |
| Howard Street 74: I done peeped you old cats’ hole card. | |
| Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.]. | |
| Mouse Rap 56: [T]hen I peeped his hole card. See, I was supposed to feel bad. | |
| Pimp’s Rap 69: You don’t want these niggers to peep your hole card, do you? |