“Being an ace”, “putting your cards on the table”, “having an ace up your sleeve”, “playing coarse”, “putting in a trick”, “singing the forty”, “staying in your thirteen”, “putting the cards face up”… Card games, and specifically the Spanish deck, have been part of the culture of our country since the 15th century, which is reflected in the large number of expressions and sayings related to cards and that We often use it colloquially. Another recurring locution in a conversation or in the media is “jack, horse and king”. Let’s see what this expression means and where it comes from.
Jack, horse and king are the figures of the three highest values of the Spanish deck, that is, 10, 11 and 12, respectively. The jack represents a page, infant or squire, the horse, a mounted knight and the king, the highest rank of the nobility, that is, the figures are arranged in a clear hierarchical order.
For its part, the expression “jack, horse and king” is used today to say that something has little variation or that it is always repeated in the same way. Or, as defined in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), “fixed set of things, which excludes or restricts the possibility of variation”.
The locution is also usually used to express that something is easy to execute as it does not present difficulties: “Your work does not require any special skill or knowledge, it is jack, horse and king”.
The curious thing about this expression is in its origin, since at first “jack, horse and king” had to do with the ritual of cooking. As the orthodox defend this typical dish, the stew is divided into three turns or acts: soup to begin with, then the chickpeas and vegetables and, finally, the meat. An order that goes from less to more; the soup is the most popular and cheapest food and the meat, the juiciest and most expensive part. Jack, knight and king.
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