Triomphe

Triomphe, French for triumph and once known in English as French ruff, is a trick taking card game dating from the late fifteenth century that most likely originated in France or in Spain, where a closely related game was called triunfo, before spreading across the rest of Europe. When the game reached Italy its name collided with an existing game called trionfi, which was subsequently renamed tarot to keep the two apart, a naming shift that still echoes in the modern word tarot. Triomphe's defining innovation was to select one of the four suits as trumps at random for each deal, rather than fixing a permanent trump suit as earlier trick taking games had done, and its play also features the robbing of the stock, a mechanic that lets a player exchange cards from their hand for cards drawn from the remaining deck under specific rules. Early accounts describe Triomphe as a point trick game, scored by the value of cards captured in tricks, though it was later also played as a plain trick game, scored simply by the number of tricks won. The game is historically significant well beyond its own play: it is the origin of the English word trump, and it stands as a direct ancestor of a wide family of later trick taking games, including Euchre and Whist.