Noun: solitaire
| Singular | solitaire |
| Plural | solitaires |
Sample Sentences
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1722-1723, Alexander Pope, letter to a lady
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[…] he really wishes he had never beheld you, nor yours. You have spoiled him for a solitaire, and a book, all the days of his life; and put him into such a condition, that he thinks of nothing, and enquires of nothing but after a person who has nothing to say to him, and has left him for ever […]
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The early French solitaire boards were marked with thirty-seven holes instead of the modern board's thirty-three; and the problems were more difficult. [1979, R. C. Bell, Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, revised edition, New York: Dover Publications, →ISBN, page 100:]
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You like to sit high on a hill / Count the daisies in the field / It's your own way of playing solitaire / You won't answer no question / Or say where you've been / The last thing you think you need is a friend [1979, Ashford & Simpson, “Stay Free”, in Stay Free (album):]
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Mr. Greenwood said yesterday that he always finished his work in a timely fashion, and that he played solitaire only when there was nothing else left to do, usually a few times a week or during lunch breaks. [2006 February 10, Winnie Hu, “Solitaire Costs Man His City Job After Bloomberg Sees Computer”, in The New York Times:]
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I learned to play solitaire as a child. Its advantages over other games were obvious, even then. No need to persuade a friend to play or explain the boring rules, no hard feelings when someone won or lost, no lessons required, no costly equipment to badger my parents into buying. I could play whenever and wherever I wanted. All I needed was a deck of cards. [2013 February 23, Francine Prose, “Solitaire: Me vs. Me”, in The New York Times:]
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The Times reported ‘two pendant earrings formed of diamond solitaires of great splendor, supporting pear-shaped pearls of proportionate value, capped with brilliants.[…]’ [2006, Clare Phillips, editor, Bejewelled by Tiffany, 1837–1987, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 102:]
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The fellow wears a ſolitaire, uſes paint, and takes rappee with all the grimace of a French marquis. [1771, [Tobias Smollett], The Expedition of Humphry Clinker […], volume II, London: […] W. Johnston, […]; and B. Collins, […], →OCLC, page 88:]
Nouns inflected like solitaire
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
Borrowed from French solitaire, ultimately from Latin sōlitārius. Doublet of solitary. See: French Nouns '
solitaire', Latin Nouns '
sōlitārius'.