Diamonds ( SuitDiamonds

) () is one of the four

playing card suit In playing cards, a suit is one of the categories into which the cards of a deck are divided. Most often, each card bears one of several pips (symbols) showing to which suit it belongs; the suit may alternatively or additionally be indicated ...

s in the standard

French-suited playing cards French-suited playing cards or French-suited cards are playing cards, cards that use the French Playing card suit, suits of (clovers or clubs ), (tiles or diamonds ), (hearts ), and (pikes or spades ). Each suit contains th ...

. Diamonds along with the other French suits were invented in around 1480. It is the only French suit to not have been adapted from the German deck, taking the place of the suit of Bells. There was one early French pack that used crescents instead of diamonds, which may explain this anomaly. Rough coloring techniques on the red stripe on the German bells may have caused the circles to appear as irregularly shaped dots, and French cardmakers may have decided to drop the details and straighten out the sides.

Name

The original

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

name of the suit is ; in German and Polish it is known as . In older German-language accounts of card games, Diamonds are frequently referred to as ("cornerstone"). In

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, the suit is still called ''Egge'' (''Ecke'' i.e. "corner") today. The term "Karo" went into the German language in the 18th century from the French , which goes back to the Latin word, , meaning "square" or "rectangle".

Characteristics

The diamond typically has a

lozenge Lozenge or losange may refer to: * Lozenge (shape), a type of rhombus *Throat lozenge A throat lozenge (also known as a cough drop, sore throat sweet, troche, cachou, pastille or cough sweet) is a small, typically medicated tablet intended to ...

shape, a

parallelogram In Euclidean geometry, a parallelogram is a simple polygon, simple (non-list of self-intersecting polygons, self-intersecting) quadrilateral with two pairs of Parallel (geometry), parallel sides. The opposite or facing sides of a parallelogram a ...

with four equal sides, placed on one of its points. The sides are sometimes slightly rounded and the four vertices placed in a square, making the sign look like an

astroid In mathematics, an astroid is a particular type of roulette curve: a hypocycloid with four cusp (singularity), cusps. Specifically, it is the Locus (mathematics), locus of a point on a circle as it Rolling, rolls inside a fixed circle with f ...

. Normally, diamonds are

red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–750 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a seconda ...

in colour so they can be used in some games as a pair with

Hearts (suit) Hearts (, ) (, ) is one of the four playing card suits in a deck of French-suited playing cards, French-suited and German-suited playing cards. However, the symbol is slightly different: is used in a French deck while is used in a German deck. ...

, like

Klondike (solitaire) Klondike is a card game for one player and the best known and most popular version of the patience or solitaire family, as well as one of the most challenging in widespread play.Parlett (1979), pp. 94–95. It has spawned numerous variants includin ...

. They can however be depicted in

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

, which is the case for example in

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

(where it is one of the two

minor suit In contract bridge the minor suits are diamonds () and clubs (). They are given that name because contracts made in those suits score less (20 per contracted trick) than contracts made in the major suits (30 per contracted trick), and they rank ...

s along with

Clubs Club may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Club (magazine), ''Club'' (magazine) * Club, a ''Yie Ar Kung-Fu'' character * Clubs (suit), a suit of playing cards * Club music * "Club", by Kelsea Ballerini from the album ''kelsea'' Brands a ...

). In the official Skat tournament deck, diamonds are

yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In t ...

orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...

, assuming the color of their German-deck equivalent, which are usually golden. The following gallery shows the diamonds from a

standard 52-card deck The standard 52-card deck of French-suited playing cards is the most common pack of playing cards used today. The main feature of most playing card decks that empower their use in diverse games and other activities is their double-sided design, w ...

. Not shown is the Knight of Diamonds used in the

tarot card games Tarot games are card games played with tarot packs designed for card play and which have a permanent trump suit alongside the usual four card suits. The games and packs which English-speakers call by the French name tarot are called tarocchi ...

: File:01 of diamonds A.svg,

Ace An ace is a playing card, die or domino with a single pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or a club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the ...

File:02 of diamonds.svg, 2 File:03 of diamonds.svg, 3 File:04 of diamonds.svg, 4 File:05 of diamonds.svg, 5 File:06 of diamonds.svg, 6 File:07 of diamonds.svg, 7 File:08 of diamonds.svg, 8 File:09 of diamonds.svg, 9 File:10 of diamonds - David Bellot.svg, 10 File:Jack of diamonds fr.svg,

Jack Jack may refer to: Places * Jack, Alabama, US, an unincorporated community * Jack, Missouri, US, an unincorporated community * Jack County, Texas, a county in Texas People and fictional characters * Jack (given name), a male given name, incl ...

File:Queen of diamonds fr.svg,

Queen Queen most commonly refers to: * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen (band), a British rock band Queen or QUEEN may also refer to: Monarchy * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Q ...

File:King of diamonds fr.svg,

King King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

Four-colour packs

Four-color deck A four-color deck (US) or four-colour pack (UK) is a deck of Playing card, playing cards identical to the standard French deck except for the color of the Playing card suit, suits. In a typical English four-color deck, hearts are red and spades ...

s are sometimes used in tournaments or online. In such packs Diamonds may be: * orange SuitDiamonds4colors

in English and German packs * yellow SuitDiamondsyellow

in American decks and German Skat tournament packs''Gallery 3 - Sizes, Shapes and Colours''
at a_pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved 4 Aug 2020. or * blue Suitdiamondsblue

in English and American Poker decks,
at pokernews.com. Retrieved 4 August 2020. French and Swiss four-colour packs.

Coding

The symbol ♦ is already in the

CP437 Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or MS-DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (dia ...

and therefore also part of Windows

WGL4 Windows Glyph List 4, or more commonly WGL4 for short, also known as the ''Pan-European character set'', is a character repertoire on Microsoft operating systems comprising 657 Unicode characters, two of them for private use. Its purpose is to pro ...

. In

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

Name

Characteristics

Four-colour packs

Coding

References

Literature

External links