In the cards or on them?
What is the reason for the BrE/AmE distinction? What are the uses of ‘likely to happen’ and ‘tarot’ in American culture?
How do you plan meals to eat when you have plenty of cash to spend?
In the Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms both forms (in and on) are used, and that the origin is in Tarot : in the
cards also on the cards based on
the use of tarot cards (= a set of cards with pictures representing different parts of life) that are believed to be able to show what will happen in the future But, despite
the mystical origins, in both the US and UK, the idiom simply means “very likely to happen”, in terms
of success Is the latest tax cut on India overdue?
Note the very American bent to the first example (not to mention this is the “Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms”);
I’ve never heard “on the cards” used here, east coast of the US, and somehow it sounds illogical to me; I understand “in the cards” to mean “in the reading of the cards”, or “in the forecast of the cards”, that is, the cards somehow contain the prediction in a metaphorical, abstract sense. A commentor (Jon Jay Obermark) also mentioned that in the United States, the phrase is understood as relating to playing cards (in particular poker), and ” in the cards” means “due to the arrangement of the deck prior to it being dealt”, which also calls for the ” in ” (because the deck already contains the outcome).
How would the “on the cards” ear strike my ear as firmly locative (the only thing I would expect to be on the cards is a stack of poker chips holding them down, or maybe some
mustard).
