wild card

1. In a card game, a card that the player can choose to represent any card. He's going to play his wild card as an ace to win.

2. Someone or something that is unpredictable. He is too much of a wild card to be a successful candidate. Nobody wants to vote for someone wildly unpredictable. The wild card in this game will be the weather.

3. A person or team who is permitted to participate in an event or competition, such as a round of playoffs, without having to adhere to the usual entry protocol. The wild card rarely wins the championship, but anything is possible.

4. In computing, a character that is substituted for an unknown character in a search. An asterisk is often used as a wild card in database searches.

wild card

An unpredictable person or event, as in Don't count on his support-he's a wild card, or A traffic jam? That's a wild card we didn't expect. This expression comes from card games, especially poker, where it refers to a card that can stand for any rank chosen by the player who holds it. The term was adopted in sports for an additional player or team chosen to take part in a contest after the regular places have been taken. It is also used in computer terminology for a symbol that stands for one or more characters in searches for files that share a common specification. Its figurative use dates from the mid-1900s.

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
Malika	mah-LIK-ah	Arabic
Amparo	ahm-PAH-ro	Spanish
Riccardo	-	Italian
Pranvera	prahn-VER-ah	Albanian
Socorro	-	Spanish
MÁRcia	-	Portuguese