écarté

Écarté (from écarter, to push aside) is a French term with several senses. In gaming, it refers to a traditional two-player card game, one of the oldest known trick-taking games from France. Variants exist, and rules have varied across time and region. The game is typically played with a reduced deck and begins with a bidding phase during which players declare a contract. The objective is to fulfill the contract by winning a certain number of tricks, with the outcome determined by the bidding and the play. The name reflects the mechanic of discarding or setting aside cards to form a hand, and some versions used a talon or stock of undealt cards.

In general French usage, écarter means to push aside or set apart. Écarté can appear as an adjective or past participle describing something that has been removed, excluded, or separated from a group or process (for example, an item écarté from a list). The term surfaces in historical references to social or courtly practices and in etymological discussions of card games.

Écarté has a place in the repertoire of traditional European card games and is often cited in discussions of early two-player play and the evolution of bidding-trick games. Although less common in modern casual play, it is documented in gaming manuals and dictionaries as a representative example of French card gaming from the 18th and 19th centuries.