There are several ways to refer to someone who cheats at card games, many of which are too profane to use in polite company. But there are two terms we can discuss — “card sharp” and “card shark.” Along with similar spellings, these terms have similar definitions, as both refer to a skilled card player who often makes money by cheating at card games.
Each term, while primarily applied to card cheats, has a secondary usage of “someone who is skilled at card games.” An onlooker might admiringly call a player a card shark after a string of wins, while an opponent might use one of the terms to call out the winner for suspected cheating.
You might assume that one of these phrases is an eggcorn, referring to new terms that are sometimes created when a person mishears or misinterprets a word that previously exists. That may be true — after all, “card sharp” appeared in print in the 1840 Henry Downes Miles novel Claude du Val, while “card shark” didn’t appear until almost four decades later in an 1877 edition of the Sandusky Daily Register. However, it’s impossible to say for sure if the second term is an eggcorn.
Another theory suggests the terms were coined independently, though both were likely derived from 17th-century British slang. At the time, Brits used “sharping” as a noun to refer to swindling, and “sharking” as an adjective for any underhanded cheating. Thus, tricksters in general were sometimes referred to as “sharps” or “sharks,” and it’s safe to assume that those terms were specifically applied to fraudsters who cheated at card games.
Today, “card shark” (sometimes “cardshark”) tends to be the more popular terminology in the U.S., and those in the United Kingdom use “card sharp” (sometimes “cardsharper”). But no matter where you’re located in the English-speaking world, the terms are largely synonymous and can be used interchangeably.
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