casino

American  

[kuh-see-noh] / kəˈsi noʊ /

noun

• casinos
  plural

1. a building or large room used for meetings, entertainment, dancing, etc., especially such a place equipped with gambling devices, gambling tables, etc.

2. (in Italy) a small country house or lodge.

3. Cards. Also cassino a game in which cards that are face up on the table are taken with eligible cards in the hand.

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casino British  

/ kəˈsiːnəʊ /

noun

1. a public building or room in which gaming takes place, esp roulette and card games such as baccarat and chemin de fer

2. a variant spelling of cassino

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• subcasino
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• casinos
  plural

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

See Examples For:

casino casinos

Barry Diller withdrew his bid to take MGM Resorts private after months of discussions with the casino operator.

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

Their new Las Vegas series, “The Roman” starring Oscar Issac as a casino president, is expected to be released year.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026

“The casino analogy only works if yen weakness were speculative,” added Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 9, 2026

On tiptoes I made my way down a stairwell to the second casino deck, which, like the others, was enclosed to keep out the rain.

From "Flush" by Carl Hiaasen

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

The hunt for AI-proof assets is leading investors to sports, casinos and travel.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 3, 2026

Now, he's excavating his diary to write about his rural upbringing and experiences of working in Las Vegas casinos.

From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026

A failed plan to bring in casinos left the area desolate after other businesses closed to make way for development that never emerged.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 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