Word.ws English Dictionary

black ace

black ace noun: a player from a junior league who is called up by an NHL team after their original team's season has ended and kept as a reserve player.

Noun

black ace (plural black aces)

  1. A player from a junior league who is called up by an NHL team after their original team's season has ended and kept as a reserve player.
    • At one time or another every Springfield player was designated a "black ace." According to Kilrea, that meant reporting to the rink at 8:30 in the morning and skating from 9 to 11. Another session followed in the afternoon, from 12 to 2, and Shore would keep his ace, or aces, out on the ice...1985, The New York Times Biographical Service - Volume 16, page 210
    • We'd have our morning skate and then I would have the black aces stay out, the guys that weren't gonna dress.2011, Rob Simpson, Black and Gold: Four Decades of the Boston Bruins in Photographs
  2. (slang) An elite mafia hitman.
    • The big man in the Mafia said: 'Billy, me and the boys are praying for you. We know you're up against the big one this time, the big black ace'.1968, Polly Rose Gottlieb, The Nine Lives of Billy Rose, page 92
    • In Missouri Deathwatch, Newton brings forth another Black Ace, this time a shadowy man called, simply, Stone.1996, William Henry Young, A Study of Action-Adventure Fiction, page 186
  3. (euphemistic, obsolete) A woman's sexual favours, or a woman who gives them.
    • Blame her not poor Woman, she loves nothing so well as a black ace.1676, George Etherege, The Man of Mode
    • The poetess Afra next shew'd her sweet face, And swore by her poetry, and her black ace, The laurel by a double right was her own, For the plays she had writ, and the conquests she had won.167?, John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, A Trial of the Poets for the Bays
  4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see black, ace.
    • The ace of spades is a black ace.

Examples of black ace in a sentence

  • At one time or another every Springfield player was designated a "black ace." According to Kilrea, that meant reporting to the rink at 8:30 in the morning and skating from 9 to 11.1985, The New York Times Biographical Service - Volume 16, page 210:
  • We spent a lot of time with the Habs as “black aces” —players who practised with the team as fifth-liners and wouldn't get into the lineup unless there was an injury to one of the veteran players.2014, Terry Ryan, Tales of a First-Round Nothing: My Life as an NHL Footnote:
  • He'd even played the role of a Mafia “black ace” for several months, back in his old life, and had sold it to the toughest critics in the world.2011, Don Pendleton, Enemy Agents, page 16:
  • Go, get two black aces, and fish for a manilio.1766, Jonathan Swift, Jounal to Stella:

Forms of black ace

pluralblack aces

Questions about black ace

What does black ace mean?
Black ace means a player from a junior league who is called up by an NHL team after their original team's season has ended and kept as a reserve player.
How do you use black ace in a sentence?
At one time or another every Springfield player was designated a "black ace." According to Kilrea, that meant reporting to the rink at 8:30 in the morning and skating from 9 to 11.
What part of speech is black ace?
Black ace is a noun.
What is the plural of black ace?
The plural of black ace is black aces.

Words near black ace in the dictionary

  1. Blachman
  2. blachong
  3. black
  4. black abalone
  5. black abalones
  6. black ace
  7. black aces
  8. black acre
  9. black acres
  10. Black Act
  11. black advance

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black ace (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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