roulette

Borrowed from French roulette (“roulette, little wheel”). The sense "situation with a random chance of incurring serious harm" may be abstracted from Russian roulette.

• IPA^(key): /ɹuːˈlɛt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

roulette (countable and uncountable, plural roulettes)

1. (uncountable) A game of chance in which a small ball is made to move round rapidly on a circle divided off into numbered red and black spaces, the one on which it stops indicating the result of a variety of wagers permitted by the game.

   Synonym: (historical) roly-poly

2. (uncountable, figuratively) An instance of risk-taking, especially when the downside exceeds the upside (contrary to the game of roulette where only the wager is lost).

   1982 April 28, Donna Hilts, “TV Report On Vaccine Stirs Bitter Controversy”, in Washington Post:

   Doctors and health officials said that the WRC-TV documentary, "DPT: Vaccine Roulette," emphasized the risks of the vaccine while ignoring the dangers of the disease, which has been almost wiped out in this country.

   • 2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 290:

     They would all rather take their chances with the existing policy-making roulette rather than follow process discipline.

   • 2020 November 2, Adam Finn quoted by Alessandra Scotto Di Santolo in Daily Express:

     By contrast giving treatments open-label slows everything down by leading us up blind alleys while playing roulette with our patients' lives.

3. (countable) A small toothed wheel used by engravers to roll over a plate in order to produce rows of dots.
4. (countable) A similar wheel used to roughen the surface of a plate, as in making alterations in a mezzotint.
5. (countable, geometry) The locus of a point on a plane curve that rolls without slipping along another fixed plane curve.
6. (philately) Any of the small incisions on a sheet of stamps, used as an alternative to perforations.
7. A cylindrical curler for the hair.

• roll

roulette (third-person singular simple present roulettes, present participle rouletting, simple past and past participle rouletted)

1. To separate or decorate by incisions made with a small toothed wheel.

   to roulette a sheet of postage stamps

• cycloid
• epicycloid
• hypocycloid
• Wikipedia article on roulette, the game
• Wikipedia article on roulettes in geometry

rouler +‎ -ette

• IPA^(key): /ʁu.lɛt/

• Audio

  (file)

roulette f (plural roulettes)

1. small wheel
2. caster, castor
3. (geometry, archaic) cycloid
4. roulette (game)
5. roulette wheel
6. (engraving) roulette
7. roller

   patin à roulettes ― roller skating

8. (dentistry) dentist drill
9. pastry roller

• rouette

• WordReference, roulette

• “roulette”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Borrowed from French roulette.

• IPA^(key): /ruˈlɛt/[1]
• Rhymes: -ɛt

roulette f (invariable)

1. roulette (game of chance)

• roulette russa (“Russian roulette”)

• tutelerò