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:
All five people were casino employees, and no guests were involved or injured, according to a Placer County Sheriff’s spokesperson.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
In fact, the entire stock market could be best described as a casino that incentivizes absurd growth like the historic tech bubble provoked by the spread of artificial intelligence.
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2026
A consumer-protection attorney filed arbitration demands against Whatnot, alleging the platform operates as an unregulated casino.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
On Wednesday, Trump is travelling to Las Vegas to deliver a speech at a casino.
From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2026
But according to Dad, Dusty still showed up every night at the casino boat, to count the money personally.
From "Flush" by Carl Hiaasen
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
The ban wouldn’t have affected Native American casinos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
He also developed a reputation as a partier because of his frequent trips to casinos and jet-setting lifestyle.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2026
Dad had decided it would be easier, as he put it, to accumulate the capital necessary to finance the Prospector if he hit the casinos for a while.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
