wild card

American  

[wahyld-kahrd] / ˈwaɪldˌkɑrd /

Or wildcard

noun

1. Cards. a card having its value decided by the wishes of the players.

2. a determining or important person or thing whose qualities are unknown, indeterminate, or unpredictable.

   In a sailboat race the weather is the wild card.

3. Sports. an unranked or unproven player or team that is allowed to enter a tournament after regularly qualifying competitors have been selected.

   The committee added several retired champions as wild cards in the tennis championships.

4. Digital Technology. a symbol in a search parameter, usually the asterisk or question mark, that will retrieve all results for another character or other characters in its position.

   The file search is case-sensitive, and wildcards are not supported.

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wild card British  

noun

1. See wild

2. sport a player or team that has not qualified for a competition but is allowed to take part, at the organizers' discretion, after all the regular places have been taken

3. an unpredictable element in a situation

4. computing a symbol that can represent any character or group of characters, as in a filename

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wild card Idioms  

1. An unpredictable person or event, as in Don't count on his support—he's a wild card, or A traffic jam? That's a wild card we didn't expect. This expression comes from card games, especially poker, where it refers to a card that can stand for any rank chosen by the player who holds it. The term was adopted in sports for an additional player or team chosen to take part in a contest after the regular places have been taken. It is also used in computer terminology for a symbol that stands for one or more characters in searches for files that share a common specification. Its figurative use dates from the mid-1900s.

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Etymology

Origin of wild card

First recorded in 1530–40

Example Sentences

For Dimon, it’s inflation that’s the wild card in the current environment.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 6, 2026

Fabio Cannavaro: Perhaps a wild card but what better way to attempt to restore a feel-good factor to Italian football than appoint a national legend.

From BBC • Apr. 3, 2026

The wild card, however, is the duration of the war and the impact of a sustained bump in fuel prices.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 1, 2026

Trujillo, the Democratic consultant, said the other wild card is Adam Miller, the tech entrepreneur who has waded into the fight against homelessness.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 17, 2026

Even so—he wasn’t chosen as a wild card for nothing.

From "Warcross" by Marie Lu