roulette

Etymology

Borrowed from French roulette (“roulette, little wheel”). The sense "situation with a random chance of incurring serious harm" may be abstracted from Russian roulette.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ɹuːˈlɛt/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
Rhymes: -ɛt

Noun

English Wikipedia has an article on:

roulette

Wikipedia

roulette (countable and uncountable, plural roulettes)

(uncountable) A game of chance in which a small ball is made to move round rapidly on a circle divided off into numbered (usually red and black) spaces. When the ball stops, it indicates the result of a variety of wagers permitted by the game.
Synonym: (historical) roly-poly
(uncountable, figuratively) An instance of risk-taking, especially when the downside exceeds the upside (contrary to the game of roulette where only the wager is lost).
- 1982 April 28, Donna Hilts, “TV Report On Vaccine Stirs Bitter Controversy”, in Washington Post:
  Doctors and health officials said that the WRC-TV documentary, "DPT: Vaccine Roulette," emphasized the risks of the vaccine while ignoring the dangers of the disease, which has been almost wiped out in this country.
- 2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 290:
  They would all rather take their chances with the existing policy-making roulette rather than follow process discipline.
- 2020 November 2, Adam Finn quoted by Alessandra Scotto Di Santolo in Daily Express:
  By contrast giving treatments open-label slows everything down by leading us up blind alleys while playing roulette with our patients' lives.
(countable) A small toothed wheel used by engravers to roll over a plate in order to produce rows of dots.
(countable) A similar wheel used to roughen the surface of a plate, as in making alterations in a mezzotint.
(countable, geometry) The locus of a point on a plane curve that rolls without slipping along another fixed plane curve.
(philately) Any of the small incisions on a sheet of stamps, used as an alternative to perforations.
A cylindrical curler for the hair.

Derived terms

Delaunay roulette
pepper roulette
roulette table
roulette wheel
Russian roulette
Sturm roulette
Vatican roulette

Related terms

roll

Translations

game of chance

Albanian: ruletë f
Arabic: رُولِيت m (rulet)
Armenian: ռուլետկա (ṙuletka), պտուտախաղ (ptutaxaġ)
Azerbaijani: ruletka
Belarusian: руле́тка f (ruljétka)
Bulgarian: руле́тка (bg) f (rulétka)
Catalan: ruleta (ca) f
Chinese:
Mandarin: 輪盤賭 / 轮盘赌 (zh) (lúnpándǔ)
Czech: ruleta (cs) f
Dutch: roulette (nl) f
Esperanto: ruleto (eo)
Estonian: rulett
Finnish: ruletti (fi)
French: roulette (fr) f
Galician: ruleta f
Georgian: რულეტკა (ruleṭḳa)
German: Roulette (de) n
Greek: ρουλέτα (el) f (rouléta)
Hebrew: רוֹלֶטָה (he) (roléta)
Hungarian: rulett (hu)
Indonesian: rolet (id)
Italian: roulette (it) f
Japanese: ルーレット (ja) (rūretto)
Kazakh: рулетка (ruletka)
Korean: 룰렛 (rullet)
Kyrgyz: рулетка (ruletka)
Latvian: rulete f
Lithuanian: ruletė f
Macedonian: руле́т m (rulét)
Malay: rolet
Marathi: रूलेट m (rūleṭ)
Norwegian:
Bokmål: rulett m

Nynorsk: rulett m
Persian: رولت (fa) (rolet)
Polish: ruletka f
Portuguese: roleta (pt) f
Romanian: ruletă (ro) f
Russian: руле́тка (ru) f (rulétka)
Slovak: ruleta f
Spanish: ruleta (es) f
Tagalog: ruleta
Thai: รูเล็ตต์ (th) (ruu-lèt)
Turkish: rulet (tr)
Ukrainian: руле́тка f (rulétka)
Uzbek: ruletka (uz)

locus

Chinese:
Mandarin: ^{(please verify)} 一般旋轮线
Finnish: vierintäkäyrä
French: roulette (fr) f
Italian: rulletta f
Spanish: ruleta (es) f

Verb

roulette (third-person singular simple present roulettes, present participle rouletting, simple past and past participle rouletted)