casino
Americannoun
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casinos
plural
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a building or large room used for meetings, entertainment, dancing, etc., especially such a place equipped with gambling devices, gambling tables, etc.
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(in Italy) a small country house or lodge.
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Cards. Also cassino a game in which cards that are face up on the table are taken with eligible cards in the hand.
noun
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a public building or room in which gaming takes place, esp roulette and card games such as baccarat and chemin de fer
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a variant spelling of cassino
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of casino
1780–90; < Italian, equivalent to cas(a) “house” + -ino diminutive suffix
Explanation
A casino is a building where people can gamble and play games of chance. Your grandmother might enjoy taking weekend bus trips to the nearest casino with her friends. Many casinos are near — or inside — hotels, and include opportunities to dine, drink, and shop. The main event at a casino, however, is the chance to gamble either by betting money on games like blackjack or poker, or by putting coins in a slot machine. Casino is also the name of a card game. The word comes from the Italian casa, or "house." In the 1800s casino came to mean "building for aristocratic gambling."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Tan said at an conference in Singapore on Monday that many investors have "no clue" and have set "extreme expectations only to find out that it's almost like they are in a casino".
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
The other was Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, who likened many AI investors to casino gamblers.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 14, 2026
Diller’s People Inc. offered in June to buy the remaining stake of the casino company it didn’t already own, in a deal valuing the company at around $12.4 billion.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 23, 2026
This spring, however, the casino offered an even stranger spectacle when a Bitcoin convention filled the expo hall.
From Slate ● Sep. 20, 2026
The casino was lit up with neon, chandeliers, and the sparkle of the slot machines.
From "Genuine Fraud" by E. Lockhart
The commercial sector, including the iconic Strip lighted up by flashing neon signs that flank air-conditioned clubs and casinos, accounts for about two-fifths of the city’s total electricity demand, according to the U.S.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2026
There were the frozen steaks, the fraudulent university, the ill-fated airline shuttle, the bankrupt Atlantic City casinos and a short-lived dating show spun off from “The Apprentice” that was canceled after two seasons.
From Salon ● Sep. 24, 2026
It also demonstrates how the Labubu craze — in which people keep buying blind boxes of the same toys in hopes of getting a rare, expensive one — has turned some shops into casinos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026
The hunt for AI-proof assets is leading investors to sports, casinos and travel.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 3, 2026
I described the glittering casinos and the glamorous high rollers, the palm trees and the swimming pools, the hotels with ice-cold air-conditioning and the restaurants where hostesses with long white gloves fit flaming desserts.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
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