deck [LME] Originally deck was a material such as canvas that was used as a covering, especially on a ship. By the end of the 15th century it was in use for the planks extending across a ship that covered what was underneath. A deckchair [L19th] was originally used for passengers who wanted to sit on a ship’s deck. Because they were foldable, they could be put away if you needed to clear the decks [M19th]. A double- decker [M19th] was originally a ship with two decks rather than a bus.

A pack of cards is usually called a deck [L16th] in the USA, and the term was formerly also British—it is recorded in Shakespeare. The definition in Dr Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, indicates the idea behind the term: ‘A pack of cards piled regularly on each other’, like the decks of a ship. In the USA a person who is not playing with a full deck is unintelligent. As a verb deck meant ‘to decorate, adorn’, as in ‘Deck the halls with boughs of holly’, from the early 16th century. In the 1940s a new meaning arose in the USA, ‘to knock someone to the ground with a punch’, probably from the naval expression hit the deck [E20th], which originally meant ‘jump out of bed for a morning roll call’.