dead man's hand
dead man's hand noun: a pair of aces and a pair of eights (especially, the black aces and eights), in a player's hand.
Noun
dead man's hand
- A pair of aces and a pair of eights (especially, the black aces and eights), in a player's hand.
- "A dead man's hand or queens on the roof at least," suggested Southack.
"They say two aces and two eights can never be beat."1907, Davida French with Esther Stevens and Laura Wells, “The Rulers of the Realm”, in Not Included in a Sheepskin: Stanford Stories, Stanford: The Stanford Book Store, page 172
- Synonyms:
- aces and eights, eights and aces
- "A dead man's hand or queens on the roof at least," suggested Southack.
- An ace and an eight as a starting hand in Texas hold 'em
- Other various hands, among them a full house of three jacks and two tens.
- When playing poker, should you hold a jack full on red sevens, it means death, and is called "a dead man's hand".1903, Cora Linn Morrison Daniels, Charles McClellan Stevens, editors, Encyclopædia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, volume 3, J. H. Yewdale, page 1478
Synonyms of dead man's hand
Origin of dead man's hand
The aces and eights sense is from a legend that Wild Bill Hickok was holding such cards at the time he was killed in 1876.
Questions about dead man's hand
- What does dead man's hand mean?
- Dead man's hand means a pair of aces and a pair of eights (especially, the black aces and eights), in a player's hand.
- What part of speech is dead man's hand?
- Dead man's hand is a noun.
Words near dead man's hand in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dead man's hand (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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