What are the card suits called in Italian?

On an Italian deck the four suits are cuori (hearts), quadri (diamonds), fiori (clubs) and picche (spades) — and only cuori translates straight across. Quadri are “squares”: the red rhombus is read as a little windowpane, exactly as French calls it carreau, a floor tile. Fiori are flowers, for the clover shape, and picche are pikes, the weapon.

The suits leak into everyday Italian: rispondere picche is to give a flat no, and prendere un due di picche is to be turned down by someone you asked out. Italy also keeps its own regional decks, with coppe, spade, denari, bastoni — the cards used for scopa and briscola. In the clip a bar-table magician forces a card and names it three times over: “Q di quadri.”