"on the cards" meaning in English

See on the cards in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase

Audio: En-au-on the cards.ogg [Australia]
Etymology: Originally referring to the predictions of fortune-tellers using cards. Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase|head=}} on the cards, {{en-PP}} on the cards
  1. (idiomatic) Likely to occur, probable. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: in the cards
    Sense id: en-on_the_cards-en-prep_phrase-dY57xaIm Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for on the cards meaning in English (1.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Originally referring to the predictions of fortune-tellers using cards.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "on the cards",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "on the cards",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2011 January 15, Saj Chowdhury, “Man City 4 - 3 Wolves”, in BBC",
          "text": "Wolves, sensing the comeback of all comebacks was on the cards, kept pressing and set up an exciting finish when Ronald Zubar's header was judged to have crossed the line, even though it appeared that Nigel de Jong had successfully cleared the effort.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Likely to occur, probable."
      ],
      "id": "en-on_the_cards-en-prep_phrase-dY57xaIm",
      "links": [
        [
          "occur",
          "occur"
        ],
        [
          "probable",
          "probable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Likely to occur, probable."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "in the cards"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-on the cards.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/69/En-au-on_the_cards.ogg/En-au-on_the_cards.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/En-au-on_the_cards.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "on the cards"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Originally referring to the predictions of fortune-tellers using cards.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "on the cards",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "on the cards",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English prepositional phrases",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2011 January 15, Saj Chowdhury, “Man City 4 - 3 Wolves”, in BBC",
          "text": "Wolves, sensing the comeback of all comebacks was on the cards, kept pressing and set up an exciting finish when Ronald Zubar's header was judged to have crossed the line, even though it appeared that Nigel de Jong had successfully cleared the effort.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Likely to occur, probable."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "occur",
          "occur"
        ],
        [
          "probable",
          "probable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Likely to occur, probable."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-on the cards.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/69/En-au-on_the_cards.ogg/En-au-on_the_cards.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/En-au-on_the_cards.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "in the cards"
    }
  ],
  "word": "on the cards"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.