roulette

roulette

See also: Roulette

English

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for roulette in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913)

Etymology

Borrowed from French roulette (“roulette, little wheel”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɹuːˈlɛt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

Noun

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 red and black spaces, the one on which it stops indicating the result of a variety of wagers permitted by the game.
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.

Derived terms

• Delaunay roulette
• roulette table
• roulette wheel
• Russian roulette
• Sturm roulette
• Vatican roulette

 

Related terms

• roll

Translations

game of chance

Albanian: ruletë f Arabic: رُولِيت‎ m (rulet) Armenian: ռուլետկա (ṙuletka), պտուտախաղ (ptutaxał) Azerbaijani: ruletka Belarusian: руле́тка f (ruljétka) Bulgarian: руле́тка (bg) f (rulétka) Catalan: ruleta f Chinese: Mandarin: 輪盤賭／轮盘赌 (zh) (lúnpándǔ) Czech: ruleta (cs) f Dutch: roulette (nl) f Esperanto: ruleto (eo) Estonian: rulett Finnish: ruletti (fi) French: roulette (fr) f Galician: ruleta f Georgian: რულეტკა (ruleṭḳa) German: Roulette (de) n Greek: ρουλέτα (el) f (rouléta) Hebrew: רוֹלֶטָה‎ (he) (rulet) Hungarian: rulett (hu) Indonesian: rolet (id) Italian: roulette (it) f Japanese: ルーレット (rūretto) Kazakh: рулетка (ruletka) Korean: 룰렛 (rullet) Kyrgyz: рулетка (ruletka) Latvian: rulete f Lithuanian: ruletė f Macedonian: руле́т m (rulét) Malay: rolet Norwegian: Bokmål: rulett m Nynorsk: rulett m Persian: رولت‎ (fa) (rolet) Polish: ruletka f Portuguese: roleta (pt) f Romanian: ruletă (ro) f Russian: руле́тка (ru) f (rulétka) Slovak: ruleta f Spanish: ruleta (es) f Tagalog: ruleta Thai: รูเล็ตต์ (th) (ruu-lèt) Turkish: rulet (tr) Ukrainian: руле́тка f (rulétka) Uzbek: ruletka (uz)

locus

Chinese: Mandarin: (please verify) 一般旋轮线 Finnish: vierintäkäyrä French: roulette (fr) f Italian: rulletta f Spanish: ruleta (es) f

Verb

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

See also

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

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French

Etymology

rouler +‎ -ette

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʁu.lɛt/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

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

Synonyms

• rouette

Derived terms

• comme sur des roulettes
• patinage à roulettes
• patin à roulettes
• planche à roulettes
• roulette de défilement
• roulette de timbres
• roulette russe

 

Descendants

• → Catalan: ruleta
• → Czech: ruleta
• → Danish: roulette, roulet
• → English: roulette
• → Galician: ruleta
• → German: Roulette (see there for further descendants)
• → Italian: roulette
• → Japanese: ルーレット
• → Norwegian Bokmål: rulett
• → Norwegian Nynorsk: rulett
• → Portuguese: roleta
• → Spanish: ruleta
• → Swedish: roulett
• → Thai: รูเล็ตต์ (ruu-lèt)

References

• WordReference, roulette

Further reading

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

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Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from French roulette.

Pronunciation

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

Noun

roulette f (invariable)

1. roulette (game of chance)

Derived terms

• roulette russa (“Russian roulette”)

References

1. roulette in Luciano Canepari, Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (DiPI)

Anagrams

• tutelerò