Trumped
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The last six panels of Yesterday's Doonesbury:
Letter sequences aside, what's the relation of trumped up to the president's name?
The OED's gloss for (the relevant sense) of trump:
A playing-card of that suit which for the time being ranks above the other three, so that any one such card can ‘take’ any card of another suit; spec. the card, usually that last turned up by the dealer, determining this suit; also, plural (formerly also in singular), the suit thus determined.
Its etymology, according to Wiktionary:
Possibly from French triomphe (“triumph”) or Old French triumphe. If so, it is a doublet of triumph and thriambus. Compare German Trumpf.
The OED just says that trump is "A corruption of triumph".
As for trumped up, that idiom started as a (obsolete) figurative extension of the verb "To put a trump upon; to take with a trump", whereby "to trump" could be used to mean "to deceive, cheat", apparently based on the idea that the trump card's triumph is temporary and artificial.
That gives rise to "to trump up", which remains in use, with the OED gloss "To get up or devise in an unscrupulous way; to forge, fabricate, invent."
What about the President's name? His Palatine ancestors bore a name originally spelled "Drumpf". According to Family Search, cited by Grokipedia,
Drumpf is a rare surname of German origin, primarily attested in the Palatinate region from the early 17th century, deriving as a nickname from Middle High German rumph denoting a 'trunk' or 'body' for a large or stout person, or possibly a bent/misshapen figure.
The initial 'd' devoiced to 't' at some point, presumably due to the High German Consonant shift. According to his Wikipedia article, the president's grandfather Friedrich Trump signed in to the U.S. in 1885 as "Friedr. Trumpf"; in his 1892 naturalization papers he's "Friedrich Trump".
In any case, his name has no etymological connection to card playing or to the fabrication of legal charges, although his region of origin does have an ironic connection to Benjamin Franklin's 1851 concerns about immigration.
AntC said,
June 29, 2026 @ 3:45 pm
Yesterday's comic.
Isn't the word-play blimmin' obvious? Here it is in Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.
Yves Rehbein said,
June 29, 2026 @ 3:46 pm
The DFD has a few alternatives for Trump, the leading interpretation being of a trumpet player (1, 2 and 3.2). The others are:
3. Tromp an unknown Old Prussian etymon (1), a placename now in modern Poland (3)
4. Trumpa, from Lithuanian trum̃pas ("short")
5. uncertain if Alemanic trümpelen ("to walk with small steps"),
6. very unlikely Trumpf, from Bavarian ("blockhead, dolt") (2), which see for more.
I will add that your cohost plays the cornet, and if there is even the slightest hint of a relation to trump, there is whole host of cor- names to consider. Hint 1: twitter in Swedish kvitteren. To crow, croak are also imitative. Hint 2: short / Latin curtus vis-a-vis Lithuanian trum̃pas. Hint 3: Inasmuch as trump in cards is cognate to tarot and card games of a similar name — see cards, ultimately uncertain.
Allen Thrasher said,
June 29, 2026 @ 7:47 pm
Michael Dummett (Yes, the philosopher and immigrant rights activist), in his book The Game of Tarot, maintained that the cards known as the Greater Trumps, the cards with human figures, were called triumfi (sp?) because they resembled the allegorical figures in Italian processions of the time, influenced by the Roman triumphs. He documents exhaustively that the Tarot began as a card game, was taken up by occultists only in the 29th c., and is still played as a game in various parts of Europe.
Apologies for any inaccuracies; I don’t have access to
Dummett’s book at present.
Michael Watts said,
June 30, 2026 @ 5:40 am
Formerly? Here are some standard usages for me:
1. Hearts are trump.
2. Trump is hearts.
3. Q: What's trump? A: Hearts.
In no case would the plural form trumps even be grammatical.
Philip Taylor said,
June 30, 2026 @ 5:51 am
The plural form may not be grammatical, as you assert Michael (tho' I doubt it), but I have never heard any of your three variants expressed using anything other than the plural form ("Hearts are trumps", "Trumps are hearts" and "Q: 'What are trumps ?' A: 'Hearts'". Is not "trumps" simply a convenient way of expressing "trump cards" in all three contexts ? "trump" could also be a convenient way of expressing "trump suit", but I think that its use in the sense of "trump cards" is far more common.
GH said,
June 30, 2026 @ 7:50 am
It seems to me probable to the point of certainty that this sense of "trump" must be at least influenced by "trumpery," from the French trompe/tromper/tromperie, relating to deceit (though how it got to that meaning from its original sense of blowing a trumpet I shall not attempt to guess).
Robert Coren said,
June 30, 2026 @ 9:49 am
I think the singular/plural dichotomy is (yet another) instance of a split between American and British usage. I have a vague recollection of a line in a Len Deighton novel about someone having "turned up trumps", meaning "made a fortunate discovery"; as far as I know this is a strictly British idiom.
Gav said,
June 30, 2026 @ 12:21 pm
Trump is a common word for fart, possibly from trumpet.
Kate Bunting said,
June 30, 2026 @ 12:52 pm
My female friends, whose tender hearts
Have better learn'd to act their parts,
Receive the news in doleful dumps:
"The Dean is dead: (and what is trumps?)
'Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift'.
Michael Watts said,
June 30, 2026 @ 3:46 pm
First, I tend to agree that this is a difference between American and British English.
No. "Trump" is just a game concept. It's not shorthand for anything, not for "trump cards" and also not for "trump suit". The phrase "trump card(s)" exists; the phrase "trump suit" doesn't really. If countable, trump would be shorthand for trump card, but the normal use is uncountable. ("He played trump" is idiomatic; "he played a trump" is at best severely anomalous.)
There is a related verb trump, which means to play a trump card.
Michael Watts said,
June 30, 2026 @ 3:50 pm
It occurs to me that the noncountable usage I mention above can be seen as parallel to the way suit names are used. You can play clubs in the same way that you can pay trump. (Though suit names are all plural and it's also possible to play "a club".)
J.W. Brewer said,
June 30, 2026 @ 6:01 pm
The earliest securely-datable use of "trumped up" I could find in perusing the google books corpus is from 1716, in a rather polemical work attributed to the Rev'd Samuel Wesley, father of the better-remembered John Wesley. Wesley Sr. is attacking various supposedly-dubious claims that had been advanced by Jacobites and their sympathizers to deter clergymen and others from taking the required oaths of allegiance to the newly-arrived King George I, and criticizes one such anti-oath moral scruple by saying "'tis believed by no other Nation in Europe, but has only been trumped up here to introduce Popery and Arbitrary Power, and is now avowedly made use of to bring in the Pretender, bred up in Idolatry and Tyranny."
Here's a use referring more specifically to the trumping up of charges from a 1760ish* novel "His first fears now gave way to another suggestion; that Anthony, in order to intimidate her into a compliance with his proposals, had trumped up a spurious claim against her; and, by virtue of a writ, confined her in some prison or spunging-house."
*Smollett's _The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves_, first serialized in a magazine in 1760-61 although I'm looking at a 1775 reprint.
HS said,
June 30, 2026 @ 8:23 pm
I think you should be a little bit more cautious about making assumptions about other varieties of English than your own. For me, a speaker of New Zealand English, the phrase "trump suit" certainly exists and is completely normal. "Trumps" [note the "s"] can be considered short for "trump card" or "trump suit". "Hearts is [or are] trumps", "Hearts is [not are] the trump suit", and "I have three trumps in my hand" are all completely standard. "He played trump" is bizarre and completely ungrammatical for me; both "he played trumps" and "he played a trump" are completely standard.
HS said,
June 30, 2026 @ 10:31 pm
"Trump" can refer to an individual card and is countable with the standard plural "trumps" (just like "a heart" and "two hearts" refer to individual cards). "He played a trump", "He has two trumps in his hand".
"Trumps" [with an "s"] can also refer to a suit (just like "hearts", "clubs", etc.) and is uncountable. "He played trumps" means he played a card belonging to the trump suit (whatever it happens to be at the moment), just like "he played hearts".
"Trump" can also be an adjective (or at least used attributively) in "trump card" and "trump suit", and a verb as in "he trumped me", meaning he played a trump on my non-trump lead.
"Turned up trumps" is an idiom obviously derived from turning up a trump card, but I wouldn't say it quite means "made a fortunate discovery" as Robert Coren says (although it could mean that). I think it really means more like "came up with a successful solution to a difficult problem" [when used of a person] or "turned out well, even though you weren't really expecting it to" [when used of events].
Robert Coren said,
July 1, 2026 @ 9:09 am
I agree that "trump suit" is perfectly normal, in the US as well as elsewhere. I'm going to guess that Michael Watts doesn't read newspaper bridge columns.
HS: Yes, that's a better interpretation of the idiom than what I gave. My recollection of the situation in the novel (which I'm pretty sure I not longer have) is that someone not noted for cleverness had done something clever (except, if I remember correctly, it turned out that he had not).
Michael Watts said,
July 3, 2026 @ 6:11 am
That seems open to question. In your example "Hearts is [or are] trumps", hearts appears to be uncountable if is is chosen and plural if are is. (Both choices are fine in my idiolect as in yours.)
Why do you think that? Where did I make such an assumption?
…and why illustrate that idea by pulling a quote that is almost the entirety of my earlier comment, except for the sentence where I agree that there's a difference between my English and Philip Taylor's?
HS said,
July 3, 2026 @ 7:56 pm
@Michaerl Watts
My apologies. When I read that paragraph of yours I took you to be making general, across-the-board claims ("Trumps is just a game concept." "It's not shorthand for anything, not for "trump cards" and also not for "trump suit", etc) and some of those claims are not true for my variety of English. Having reread your comment and your exchange with Philip Taylor I can now see that you could just be making claims about your variety of English, but you don't explicitly state that and I don't think it is very clear.
In my example "Hearts is [or are] trumps" I was trying to cover both trump cards and a trump suit (I mentioned "trump card" and "trump suit" in the previous sentence). "Hearts is trumps" means "the suit of hearts is the trump suit", and "hearts are trumps" means individual heart cards are trump cards. (In practice "hearts are trumps", though I think strictly referring to individual cards, would of course normally be intended in a general sense, and not to actual explicit cards, and effectively means "the suit of hearts is the trump suit", but if you explicitly mention "suit" then you are referring grammatically to the suit of hearts and would say "hearts is the trump suit", not "hearts are the trump suit".)
So for me at any rate I think there is a clear grammatical distinction between "trumps" referring to individual cards, where it is countable (one trump, two trumps, a trump) and "trumps" referring to a suit (trumps), where it is uncountable, in exactly the same way that there is a grammatical distinction between "hearts" referring to individual cards, where it is countable (one heart, two hearts, a heart) and "hearts" referring to a suit, where it is uncountable (hearts). (In practice, of course, in an actual extended discourse describing play in a game, a speaker will be using both these forms, mixing them together and switching back and forth between them.) I am a bit surprised that it apparently doesn't work this way in American English, based on your comments and Robert Cohen's comment. As I mentioned, your example "he played trump" is bizarre and ungrammatical for me. I would say either "he played trumps" referring to the suit, or "he played a trump" referring to an individual card.
HS said,
July 3, 2026 @ 9:00 pm
Also, the reason I didn't quote your first sentence ("First, I tend to agree that this is a difference between American and British English.") is that I felt (and still feel) that there is a clear structural break in your comments between that sentence and the following part where you block-quote Philip Taylor and comment on what he says (you actually begin that sentence with "first", implying that there is a second), and that reinforced my impression that your comments on what Philip Taylor said were intended as general, across-the-board comments, not just comments about your own personal variety of English.
Andreas Johansson said,
July 13, 2026 @ 12:34 pm
Kvitten isn't a Swedish word, but kvittra means "twitter" (verb).
Andreas Johansson said,
July 13, 2026 @ 12:36 pm
That was supposed to say that kvitteren isn't a Swedish word. Damn autocorrect!