However, because the card abbreviation for knave was so close to that of the king ('Kn' versus 'K'), the two were easily confused. The knave card had been called a jack as part of the terminology of the game All Fours since the 17th century, but this usage was considered common or low class. The term became more entrenched in card play when, in 1864, American cardmaker Samuel Hart published a deck using 'J' instead of 'Kn' to designate the lowest-ranking court card. The word 'Jack' was in common usage in the 16th and 17th centuries to mean any generic man or fellow, as in Jack-of-all-trades (one who is good at many things), Jack-in-the-box (a child's toy), or Jack-in-the-Pulpit (a plant). It evolved to mean 'young manservant or henchman'. Knave became a derogatory word because royal households had so many of these young men who went swaggering around the streets picking fights, molesting girls and generally making nuisances of themselves.

The French word valet means the same thing. In the context of a royal household it meant a male servant without a specific role or skill not a cook, gardener, coachman, etc. The king-queen-valet format then made its way into England.Īs early as the mid-16th century the card was known in England as the knave which originally meant 'boy or young man', as its German equivalent, Knabe, still does. The knight was subsequently dropped out of non- Tarot decks leaving the valet directly under the queen. In France, where the card was called the valet, the queen was inserted between the king and knight. When brought over to Italy and Spain, the thānī nā'ib was made into an infantry soldier or page ranking below the knight card. This was the lowest of the three court cards and like all court cards was depicted through abstract art or calligraphy. The earliest predecessor of the knave was the thānī nā'ib (second or under-deputy) in the Mamluk card deck. History Knave of coins from the oldest known European deck ( c. The usual rank of a jack is between the ten and the queen. Jack cards of all four suits in the English patternĪ Jack or Knave, in some games referred to as a Bower, in Tarot card games as a Valet, is a playing card which, in traditional French and English decks, pictures a man in the traditional or historic aristocratic or courtier dress, generally associated with Europe of the 16th or 17th century. For other uses, see Knave of Hearts (disambiguation).

Women playing card queen costume